Page last updated on 2024 November 03
This page was created in 2009 as an outgrowth of the section entitled "Books Read or Heard" in my personal page. The rapid expansion of the list of books warranted devoting a separate page to it. Given that the book introductions and reviews constituted a form of personal blog, I decided to title this page "Blog & Books," to also allow discussion of interesting topics unrelated to books from time to time. Lately, non-book items (such as political news, tech news, puzzles, oddities, trivia, humor, art, and music) have formed the vast majority of the entries.
Entries in each section appear in reverse chronological order.
Blog entries for 2024
Blog entries for 2023
Blog entries for 2022
Blog entries for 2021
Blog entries for 2020
Blog entries for 2019
Blog entries for 2018
Blog entries for 2017
Blog entries for 2016
Archived blogs for 2015
Archived blogs for 2014
Archived blogs for 2012-13
Archived blogs up to 2011
2024/11/03 (Sunday): Today, I offer reviews of two science titles and a Nobel Laureate's novel.
(1) Book review: Pierrehumbert, Raymond T., Planetary Systems: A Very Short Introduction, unabridged 4-hour audiobook, read by Mike Cooper, Tantor Audio, 2022. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
It wasn’t long ago that we knew only of the Solar System as the only example of a planetary system, that is, a star and the bodies orbiting it. Now, thanks to a new generation of powerful telescopes, not only do we know many thousands of planetary systems, but we have observed planetary systems as they were being born.
This book, from Oxford’s wonderful “Very Short Introduction” series composed of hundreds of titles, explores our newfound information and ongoing research in this exciting frontier. Pierrehumbert, a professor of physics at Oxford University, takes us on a grand tour, from the Big Bang to trillions of years into the future, when the universe will be a dilute soup of dim galaxies, populated mostly by red dwarf stars.
Pierrehumbert also explains how the elements that make up life are forged in the interiors of dying stars, later making their way into rocky planets. He also covers the vast array of newly-discovered planets within star systems other than our own, and explains the factors that determine their climates. Finally, he reveals what determines the life-span of planetary systems and what happens to them as they die.
(2) Book review: Kang, Han (translated by Deborah Smith), The Vegetarian, unabridged 5-hour audiobook, read by Deborah Smith, Janet Song, and Stephen Park, Random House Audio, 2016.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I decided to peruse this book when Han Kang was awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize for Literature, "for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life."
The novel's protagonist, Yeong-hye, is completely unremarkable in every way, according to her husband, Mr. Cheong, whose narrative opens the story. Chapters are written from the viewpoints of Yeong-hye, her husband, and various other individuals. This ordinary, somewhat boring, life comes to a screeching halt, when Yeong-hye decides to throw out all the meat in her house and become a vegetarian.
Mr. Cheong's demand for an explanation goes unmet, when Yeong-hye just says that she had a dream. Though unknown to her husband, the dream was dark, bloody, and violent.
Yeong-hye's married life soon falls apart, as do her physical and mental health. It is unclear whether she has a predisposition to illnesses that were triggered by malnutrition or that the author implies that there is something wrong with being a vegetarian.
Mr. Cheong is highly frustrated by his ordinary life going up in smoke, his wife not wanting sex anymore, and her not being presentable to his colleagues, especially since she stopped wearing a bra. Things go downhill quickly for Yeong-hye, her husband, and the rest of the family, with Yeong-hye eventually committed to a mental institution.
This remarkable novel covers a society’s most-inflexible structures, as we watch them fail one by one. It portrays the frictions between passion and detachment, between feeding and denying desires. With impassive or violent reactions to those desires, they are bound to break out somehow, with super-ugly results.
(3) Book review: Maslin, Mark, Climate Change: A Very Short Introduction, unabridged 5-hour audiobook, read by Gareth Richards, Tantor Audio, 4th ed., 2021. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Over the last couple of decades, global awareness of climate change has grown very rapidly, thanks in part to the efforts of youth activists such as Greta Thunberg, groups such as Extinction Rebellion, IPCC's high-impact reports, numerous documentaries, and declarations from world governments that we are in a climate emergency.
Awareness of climate change and its possible catastrophic impacts continues to grow, although there are also serious efforts, funded by interest groups such as the fossil fuel industry, to dismiss the problem as overblown or even a hoax. Incontrovertible scientific evidence points to a forthcoming crisis of our own making, forcing us to examine the entire basis of modern society and humans’ relationship with other species and the entire planet.
As politicians, supported by interest groups and organizations with deep pockets, argue against the seriousness of climate change, Maslin tells us that climate change is not a problem for the distant future: It is already happening! He also discusses the geopolitics of climate change and the win-win solutions we can employ to avoid its very worst effects. Throughout, he demonstrates how the scope of the problem demands that we develop new modes of thinking at individual, corporate, and government levels to collectively tackle this do-or-die challenge.
2024/11/01 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] My Halloween set-up on Thursday 10/31. [Center] I have fulfilled my GoodReads reading challenge for 2024 a couple of months ahead of schedule. [Right] Many churches have become politicized: Their tax-exempt status must be revoked.
(2) There are only two reasons a woman might not have children: Either she can’t, or she doesn’t want to. In either case, it’s none of your business.
(3) UCSB announces its selected book for “UCSB Reads 2025” program, now in its 19th year: The Book of Delights: Essays (2019), by Ross Gay, has had a good reception and became a best-seller, but I was underwhelmed by it. Here’s my 3-star review of the book on GoodReads.
(4) Homa Sarshar: “Solutions to Iran’s problems & the country’s future leaders are all inside Iran. No one can prescribe solutions from 1000s of kilometers away. While there are sincere, decent people among the overseas opposition, most act with the intention to line their pockets.” [Tweet, with video]
(5) Iranians who support Trump because they believe he will topple the mullahs’ regime must be disappointed: He says he will negotiate with the Islamic Republic of Iran and isn’t looking for regime change. [Meme]
(6) An Iranian lioness: A hijab-less Iranian woman is harassed by a soldier in uniform, riding a motorcycle. She takes the matter into her own hands, teaching the harasser a lesson, as men just look on without helping.
(7) Final thought for the day: Cold Play in its Buenos Aires concert collaborates with Golshifteh Farahani to perform Sherwin Hajipour’s “Baraa-ye,” the Grammy-winning song which has become an anthem for the #WomanLifeFreedom movement.
2024/10/31 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Throwback Thursday: This Great-Depression-era teardrop camper was lightweight and thus could be easily towed by any vehicle. It slept two and featured an external galley kitchen. The design fell out of favor in the 1960s, only to be rediscovered in the 1990s. [Top center] Closing arguments by Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. [Top right] Throwback Thursday: The magnificent Art-Deco City Hall of Buffalo, NY. [Bottom left & center] My new UCSB office in Ellison Hall is taking shape: Only a couple of super-heavy 5-drawer file cabinets remain to be pushed into place. [Bottom right] Tonight's Talangor Group talk on contradictions of democratic rule (see the last item below).
(2) Scarier than a Halloween ghost: RFK Jr. is said to have been offered a healthcare-related cabinet position in DJT's next administration.
(3) Tonight’s Talangor Group meeting: Dr. Ali Akbar Mahdi (Professor of Sociology, Cal State U. Northridge) spoke in Persian under the title "Contradictions of Democratic Rule." Before the main talk, Dr. Nayereh Tohidi made a brief presentation on Iran Academia, a free on-line university, and encouraged contributions to its endowment fund.
Dr. Mahdi began by presenting a brief history of democracy, from ancient Greece to now. Democracy can be defined as rule of the people, regardless of whether it is implemented in a republic, a constitutional monarchy, or some other form of government. Democracy can be participatory, representative, or deliberative. At the scale of modern nations, representative democracy is the most practical. While democracy is the rule of majority, it also respects minority rights.
Dr. Mahdi then discussed a number of contradictions or dilemmas faced by democratic rule.
- Freedom of economic activity vs. efficiency
- Equality vs. wide range of abilities
- Freedom of speech vs. national security
- Representatives’ self-interest vs. people’s will
Next, taking ideas from the book How Democracies Die (by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, 2018), Dr. Mahdi enumerated a number of dangers lurking behind every democracy. These include populism, dealing with the opposition as threats to national security (the enemy within), questioning democratic laws, casting doubt on the legitimacy of elections or political opponents, resorting to violence, and curtailing civil liberties.
Other problems we face in the US include ineffective parties with inadequate screening of candidates and the undue influence of money throughout the election process. Big news corporations, with many other economic interests that can be threatened by criticizing politicians or political candidates, are also part of the problem.
During the Q&A session, I shared a definition of democracy from Yuval Noah Harari’s new book, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI. Democracy is a system of government with distributed decision-making and self-correction mechanisms. Dictatorships are centralized and lack self-correction. Often a dictator rises to power through a democratic process but then systematically eliminates the self-correction mechanisms, until nothing is left to detect and point out errors.
2024/10/30 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Iranian mullahs raise the white flag after the destruction of their entire Russian-supplied air defense system by Israel. Ali Akbar Velayati, a close Khamenei adviser, states in an interview that Iran is ready to resume talks and establish relations with the West. [Center] Persian calligraphic art with the theme of “eshgh” (“love”). [Right] Underground parking and other amenities at the Sydney Opera House.
(2) Billionaire owners of major newspapers and other media outlet dare not offend the big orange bully: They withhold previously-planned endorsement of Kamala Harris. In their various businesses, these billionaires benefit from government largesse and fat contracts. Therefore, given Trump's threats to retaliate against those who do not show loyalty to him, these owners put their financial interests over their patriotic duty.
(3) I can't believe that CNN is still both-siding every election story by including Trumpian talking heads: There is only one side; the side of decency, respect, honesty, and tolerance.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Verified satellite images of the damage inflicted by Israel's aerial attack on Iran's military facilities.
- Flash floods in Spain kill ~100, as they carry debris of houses and cars. [NYT]
- Irvine, CA, is considering a sister-city pact with Gaza City, which is run by a terrorist organization.
- Persian and Kurdish names for a number of plants that grow in western Iran.
- Quote of the day: “Mr. Bezos: Journalists must be truthful, not neutral.” ~ Christiane Amanpour
(5) The “grate cheese robbery”: Nearly 1000 wheels of artisanal cheddars — worth more than $389,000 — were reported stolen from a London-based company this month. [WaPo]
(6) Blame AI for your rising electricity bills: Tech giants are building new data centers to compete in the AI domain, leading to a rise in demand for electricity.
(7) Definition of democracy, from Yuval Noah Harari’s new book, Nexus (my review forthcoming): Democracy is a system of government with distributed decision-making and self-correction mechanisms. Dictatorships are centralized and not self-correcting. Often a dictator rises to power through a democratic process but then systematically eliminates the self-correction mechanisms, until nothing is left to detect and point out errors.
2024/10/27 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Cover feature of Science magazine (see the next item below). [Center] AutoFlight's eVTOL concept aircraft (see the item 3 below). [Right] Not the most-important data in today's troubled world, but here it is anyway: Average number of weekly bowel movements in Europe, by country.
(2) Fast fires: The cover feature of Science magazine, issue of Oct. 25, 2024, examines the reasons for greater destructiveness and rapid spreading of recent fires in the US. "The most destructive and deadly wildfires in US history were also fast. Using satellite data, we analyzed the daily growth rates of more than 60,000 fires from 2001 to 2020 across the contiguous US. Nearly half of the ecoregions experienced destructive fast fires that grew more than 1620 hectares in 1 day. These fires accounted for 78% of structures destroyed and 61% of suppression costs ($18.9 billion)."
(3) Vertical take-off and landing (VTOL): VTOL is slated to be one of the key technologies of the future, both for aircraft and for urban vehicles such as air taxis. Electric VTOL (eVTOL) has already been successfully deployed in fully-electric aircraft for short-range travel. As battery densities grow, higher-capacity batteries can be incorporated into light-weight aircraft, extending their range and safety. Get ready for traffic jams in the air!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Donald Trump has a 15-point lead among male voters: Now you know who to blame if he wins.
- It's Gates vs. Musk: Bill Gates says privately he donated $50 million to Kamala Harris campaign.
- Factory that produced 60% of IV fluids used in the US shut down due to NC floods, causing severe shortage.
- Iran's Islamist regime has executed another foreign hostage, the kidnapped and tortured Jamshid Sharmahd.
(5) Breaking news about a long-dead composer: An unknown waltz by Chopin, written nearly 200 years ago, has been discovered in the vault of the Morgan Library & Museum in New York. It was unearthed in a collection of memorabilia, alongside postcards signed by Picasso and letters from Brahms and Tchaikovsky.
(6) My thoughts for after November 5, 2024: I am rooting for Kamala Harris and have been contributing to her campaign in multiple rounds. However, I am genuinely scared for our future, regardless of the outcome.
Why I am scared of a Trump win is obvious: Paying lip service to the needs of the working class, while further enriching the super-rich; Weakening the rule of law; Putting in positions of power know-nothing individuals, based only on their loyalty; Tarnishing the US image around the word, so that it can no longer deter territorial aggression or act as a force for good.
My reasons for fearing a Harris presidency are less obvious. The prospects of Civil War II are quite real. Even in the absence of a full-blown national war, we may experience local conflicts, as well as violent attacks on politicians, civil servants, racial minorities, and religious minorities. In short, I am concerned about pent-up rage when the grand MAGA promises go the way of Trump Charity or Trump University, to name just two of his countless scams.
2024/10/26 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Forget about immigration policy, tariffs, who gets a tax cut, judge appointments, and other policy differences for a minute: Which of these two faces do you want to see splattered over your TV screens and newspaper front pages over the next four years? Do you want to be shown a fist or a smile? [Right] Curtis Sittenfeld's Romantic Comedy: A Novel (see the last item below)
(2) Israel retaliates against the mullahs' regime: Scores of Israeli jets conduct three waves of strikes before dawn on Saturday against missile factories and other sites inside Iran. Iran claims limited damage and releases the names of two soldiers killed at a military facility.
(3) Apology was overdue: President Biden apologizes to Native Americans for the forced removal of their children from their homes and enrolling them at special Indian boarding schools to erase their language and culture. Nearly 1000 of the children died of disease and malnutrition at these schools.
(4) Discovering lost Silk-Road cities: Michael Franchetti of Washington U. of St. Louis and Farhod Maksudov of Uzbekistan's National Center of Archaeology used drone-based LiDAR to identify the remains of two medieval cities along the ancient Silk Road in the mountains of southeastern Uzbekistan. The high-resolution LiDAR images show homes, plazas, fortifications, and roads in detail, shedding new light on urban life in the remote mountains of Central Asia between the 6th and 11th centuries.
(5) Book review: Sittenfeld, Curtis, Romantic Comedy: A Novel, unabridged 9-hour audiobook, read by Kristen Sieh, Random House Audio, 2023.
[My 3-star review of this book on GoodReads]
The protagonist of this novel, Sally Milz, is a sketch writer for "The Night Owls," a late-night live Saturday TV show a la "Saturday Night Live." Having abandoned the pursuit of love in favor of a fulfilling career and an occasional fling, she is nevertheless envious of average-looking or even dorky men, such as her co-worker Danny, who date stunningly beautiful and highly accomplished women, wondering why the reverse never happens. Sally channels her annoyance into a comedy sketch called the "Danny Horst Rule," poking fun at this asymmetry.
When charismatic pop star Noah Brewster, the show's guest host for a week, enters Sally's life and sparks fly between them, she wonders whether life is imitating rom-com storylines; or is she imagining something that's too good to be true? Sally and Noah hit it off and develop a long, loving relationship, after sally drives 1500 miles for their first romantic meeting, which she calls a "booty call."
The novel, written in the form of a diary covering 5 years, consists of three chapters, with a shorter Chapter 2, titled "July 2020," sandwiched between much longer Chapters 1 and 3, "April 2018" and "August 2020." The Prologue covers "February 2018" and the Epilogue, "April 2023." I found the first half of the novel better-written and more absorbing.
2024/10/25 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] My wooden back-patio fence was partially removed for replacement, due to extensive termite and dry-rot damage. The front-patio fence needs only minor repairs. [Center] Results of Thursday night's food prep: Egg salad, salad from a Costco kit, and pasta with turkey sauce. [Right] Vaclav Smil's Invention and Innovation (see the last item below).
(2) Media reports indicate that Arab-Americans are frustrated with Biden administration's Israel policy, so they may vote for Trump: Try to figure this one out!
(3) Iranian women against a brutal, misogynistic, Islamist regime: Atefeh Na'ami, 37, a kind-hearted activist, was found dead in her own home. Atefeh was covered with bruises, and a hose pipe connected to the building’s heating shoved down her throat. Iranian authorities have claimed it was a suicide, but not before the original investigator was taken off her case after saying it was murder. Atefeh was a vocal supporter of the #WomanLifeFreedom movement. She joined street marches sans her hijab and chanted slogans from her balcony in the evenings. [Source: IranWire] [Tweet, with photos]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- This debate between Jews belonging to Republican and Democratic parties should be interesting. [Flyer]
- Two Iranian women were killed by men whose marriage proposals they had rejected. [Source: IranWire]
- Two companies will pay $102 million to settle the Baltimore bridge collapse lawsuit. [NYT]
- Yummy fish recipe with pomegranate sauce, prepared in an outdoors setting (don't try this at home)!
(5) Book review: Smil, Vaclav, Invention and Innovation: A Brief History of Hype and Failure, unabridged 8-hour audiobook, read by Tim Fannon, Recorded Books, 2023. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Smil, who has written more than 40 books on scientific subjects and global matters, begins by discussing a number of inventions that were hailed as important breakthroughs but produced disastrous environmental consequences: Leaded gasoline, DDT insecticide, and Chlorofluorocarbons.
Smil then moves on to a few inventions that were supposed to change the world but did not live up to the hype. These include airships (which may be making a comeback now), nuclear power, supersonic passenger planes, and magnetic-levitation trains.
He next tackles ideas that, aided by the media looking for easy, attention-grabbing headlines, generated much excitement but failed to develop into useful technologies. Examples include nuclear fusion, high-speed travel in vacuum (hyperloop), and nitrogen-fixing cereal crops.
Smil expresses doubt that, even if successfully deployed, supersonic air travel or land travel in the cramped space of a hyperloop train would markedly improve our lives. Life-changing discoveries of the future pertain to the less-glamorous water-treatment processes and improvements in agricultural yields.
2024/10/24 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] Throwback Thursday: A famous strudels/donuts joint on Tehran's Naderi Ave. and Iranian women pilot trainees, both dating back to ~50 years ago. [Top right] This mural in Tehran's Palestine Square declares in Hebrew: "No hostage will be freed!" [Bottom left] This week is International Open Access Week: University of California and other organizations are holding events to celebrate the positive impact of open-access publishing on broader dissemination of research discoveries. [Bottom center] Today's beautiful sunrise, captured from my bedroom window. [Bottom right] Beauties in mathematics and Persian calligraphic art.
(2) Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, achieves another distinction: Of the top 100 performers in the National University Entrance Exam, 93 choose to attend SUT, with a whopping 71 selecting the computer engineering major. The EE major attracted 16 of these top students. [From a posting by Bardia Safaei]
(3) Daron Acemoglu and 22 other Nobel Laureates in Economics signed a letter endorsing Kamala Harris for President. "We believe Harris's policies will result in a stronger economic performance, with economic growth that is more robust, more sustainable, and more equitable."
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Thousands of North Korean soldiers are in Russia to help with the Ukraine War. [NYT]
- Iran's new President has been unable to reconcile his promises with the goals & policies of IRGC.
- Greece confronts new internal Islamist threat: The Dawat-e-Islami Organization.
- Already widespread, and likely growing, outbreak of e-coli linked to McDonald's Big Mac burgers.
(5) Meme of the day: How sad it must be, believing that scientists, scholars, historians, economists, and journalists have devoted their entire lives to deceiving you, while a reality television star, with decades of fraud and exhaustively documented lying, is your only beacon of truth and honesty.
(6) Luke Durant, a 36-year-old programmer from Alabama, has discovered M136279841, the largest known prime number, which has 41 million decimal digits.
(7) Longer crosswalks blamed for higher pedestrian fatalities: From 2010 to 2021, the number of pedestrians killed in US traffic collisions rose 77% while the number killed in Europe declined 20% for the decade. An NYU study examined the relationship between a city’s crosswalk length and its rate of pedestrian collisions. The study found the average crossing distance in Paris to be 26 feet vs. 43 feet in San Francisco & 58 feet in Irvine.
2024/10/22 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] On 7-segment display turning into a 6-segment display (see the next item below). [Top center] Someone suggested that every American should try to visit these 34 places: I have done 18 of them and will be satisfied if I get to 25. [Top right] Here's a tough puzzle for Sudoku fans. [Bottom left] Sloppy math used to prove 4 = 5: See if you can spot the error. [Bottom center] IranWire cartoon of the day: Khamenei's ship is sinking. [Bottom right] Donald Trump insists that he has nothing to do with Project 2025. Judge for yourself. Here is the list of Project 2025's authors and their roles in the first Trump administration.
(2) Musings of a curious engineer: Shortly after midnight, I noticed that one segment in the 7-segment display of my bedside clock had gone dark. The failure affected the representations of most digits, that is, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, and 9. The digits 1, 2, 4, 7 remained recognizable, but 0 resembled 6, both 3 & 9 looked like 5, and 8 turned into 6. Given that the faulty segment is in the rightmost or least-significant position, I may be able to live with this clock for some time, but I sense that other segments may start failing soon.
(3) Hope you enjoyed your 60th birthday, Madame Vice President! Your opponent is nearly two decades older. Use your youthful energy to defeat him.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- US charges Iranian Revolutionary Guards senior official in a plot to assassinate activist Masih Alinejad.
- Who is the only US President who refers to "Persian Gulf" as "Arabian Gulf"?
- Yes, Gazans are suffering: But remember their celebrations after October 7, 2023, and September 11, 2001.
- I guess it's hard to separate church from state when you can't even separate fact from fiction.
(5) AAAS webinar on the upcoming US elections: A panel set up by the American Association for the Advancement of Science took up the subject of "2024 US Elections and Its Potential Impact on Science Funding." The panelists discussed the ways in which AAAS engages with the media and government agencies on science policy and helps scientists connect with local and national media in their areas of expertise. AAAS has launched press packages based on the contents of the Science family of journals in order to spread correct scientific information, thereby battling misinformation and disinformation. Science and technology issues on AAAS’s radar include CHIPS & science funding, research security, AI everywhere, NIH modernization, scientific misconduct & AI tools, and distrust of scientific information & data. Attending local events and engaging with the local media are very important, as the latter are the most trusted information sources these days.
2024/10/20 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] After an orange boor and a senile man, it would be nice to see a glamorous President in the White House. [Center] Photos from Ventura Harbor Village, where our family dined today to celebrate my niece's birthday. [Right] Science policy in the next US administration (see the next item below).
(2) What the next US election could mean for scientific research: An enormous amount is riding on the upcoming US elections in terms of social and economic programs. But scientists and technologists are also anxious about the outcome. The stakes for science are indeed quite high. Unfortunately, neither candidate talks about science policy. Harris's priorities on climate change and renewable energy will bring benefits to the scientific community. Trump's focus on staying ahead of China could mean robust support for AI and cybersecurity research.
(3) Use additions instead of multiplications to save 95% of the energy consumed by AI applications: Floating-point matrix multiplications account for much of the computational workload in machine learning. Given that machine learning does not need high-precision computation of the kind performed by standard microprocessors and GPUs, many proposals have emerged for low-precision or approximate multiplication to mitigate the high energy cost of AI applications. In a recent paper, Hongyin Luo and Wei Sun of BitEnergy AI, Inc., suggest that 8-bit floating-point multiplication can be approximated by integer addition, which uses at least an order-of-magnitude less energy. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2410.00907
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Documents pertaining to a possible Israeli attack on Iran leaked.
- SNL's "Weekend Update" contrasts the styles of the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates.
- History of Jews, Jerusalem, and Palestine. [71-minute part 1] [102-minute part 2]
- A short Persian poem using words whose initials are all the letters of the alphabet, in order. [Video]
(5) Final thought for the day: According to media reports, many Americans say that they will leave the country if their candidate loses the presidential election. This is so un-American! they should stay and fight to push the "wrong" president out of office in 2028 or perhaps earlier.
2024/10/18 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Math puzzle: Given 2 circles & a rectangle of area 243 cm^2 as shown, find R. [Center] Today, I got rid of a large batch of stencils (Persian/Arabic letters in different font sizes and some decorative borders), which I used before the availability of word processors to make brochures and compose Persian text. The text on my father's tombstone was composed in this way. [Right] Math puzzle: Find the ratio R/r of the two radii in this diagram with a square and two circles.
(2) A mass-terror plot foiled: Muhammad Shahzeb Khan, a Pakistani national on a Canadian student visa, was arrested for planning a mass attack in New York. [NYT]
(3) China assumes leadership role in setting tech standards: China has been increasingly assertive in the technology standard-setting process. Last month for example, the International Telecommunication Union approved three new technical standards that will be embedded in sixth-generation (6G) mobile technology, all developed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and China Telecom. Unlike the West, which has tended to defer to private companies and industry associations in the standard-setting process, China's approach is led by its government. [The Economist]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Yahya Sinwar, the new leader of Hamas and mastermind of the October 7 massacre, is confirmed dead.
- DNA evidence shows that Yahya Sinwar was involved in the execution-style killings of six hostages.
- Archdiocese of Los Angeles agrees to pay $880 million to settle sex abuse claims. [NYT]
- All of Cuba is plunged into darkness by a nationwide power outage. [NYT]
(5) Latinos are the largest target of election misinformation & disinformation: Claims such as Harris being a communist (scary to Cuban-Americans), the election having been cancelled, and illegal aliens being allowed to vote are making the rounds on social media.
(6) A team from United Kingdom's University College London demonstrated wireless data transfer at speeds of nearly 1 terabits per second, over five times the previous wireless transmission world record.
(7) Responsible Machine Learning Summit, 2024: This all-day event, with a focus on "AI and Materials," was held at UCSB today.
In the opening keynote address, Eric Toberer (Colorado School of Mines) spoke about his own work and an alliance of more than a dozen institutions collaborating on emerging AI applications at the boundary of physics and material science.
The keynote talk was followed by a panel discussion, "Integrating AI into Material Discovery and Design." For the full program, see the Summit's Web page.
2024/10/17 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Socrates Think Tank talk on lab-grown diamond (see the next item below). [Center] Recent addition to a NYC subway sign. [Right] Talangor Group talk about instability in the Middle East (see the last item below).
(2) Last night's Socrates Think Tank talk: Dr. Reza Abbaschian (Distinguished Professor of Sustainability, UC Riverside) spoke under the title "High-Pressure, High-Temperature Growth of Jewelry Diamonds." There were ~100 attendees.
I was disappointed that the talk began with a mention of Marilyn Monroe's "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend," what in this day and age is construed as a sexist remark.
There are two ways of producing lab diamonds: High-pressure, high-temperature process and chemical vapor deposition. Carbon, which is the sole ingredient in diamonds, takes several different forms.
- Carbon as graphene, which is a single layer of carbon atoms with amazing strength and electrical properties.
- Carbon as graphite, bulk material with many applications, including in building lithium-ion batteries.
- Carbon as diamond, in which each carbon atom is connected with other atoms, with no free electrons.
Mined diamond is of two types, type I (98%) and type II (rare). Mined diamond costs ~$100/carat wholesale, with retail cost being 2-3 times higher. Each carat is 200 mg. In 1955, six General Electric researchers succeeded in synthesizing diamond.
The rest of Dr. Abbaschian's talk covered his personal experiences in synthesizing diamonds, the market & applcations for lab-grown diamonds, and bringing the production machinery to U. Florida, where he worked.
(3) My older son turned 40 today. To help him celebrate, I dug up the following facts about the number 40.
Repdigit 1111 in ternary notation.
Fourth octagonal number.
Sum of the first four pentagonal numbers, 1 + 5 + 12 + 22.
40 primes are generated by n^2 + n + 41 for n = 0, 1, 2, ... , 39 (Euler).
The 40 primes above are separated by 2, 4, 6, ... , 78.
–40 is the unique temperature where the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales coincide.
"40" is the title of songs by Dave Matthews Band, Franz Ferdinand, and U2.
And, of course, we have WD-40!
(4) Tonight's Talangor Group talk: Dr. Reza Alavi talked about "The Roots of Instability in the Middle East and the Nostalgia for an Islamic Empire." There were ~90 attendees.
After the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, the relative stability of the Middle East perished. Over time, Sunni powers have wanted to return to the caliphates of early Islam. Shi'is, on the other hand, want a powerful religious state centered on an Imam. As a result, Islamic revival movements proceeded along divergent paths.
Fundamentalist Sunni ideology emerged in India, Saudi Arabia, and in the form of Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and several other countries. Saudis, and Al Qaeda that followed in their footsteps, favored activism to usurp political power. Al Qaeda had a long-term plan of disposing the existing governments and then proceeding to establish their own ideal caliphate. Both Taliban and Daesh had territorial goals from the very beginning.
Both Sunnis and Shi'is wanted to rule differently from normal political systems. They wanted the rule of God through a Caliph or an Imam as an absolute authority.
When in 1923, Turkey abolished the caliphate and built on its ruins a modern republic, Muslims blamed all of their problems on the absence of religious rule. They viewed an Islamic government as the only cure for all ills. This upheaval preceded the establishment of Israel by 25 years (1923 to 1948).
While the French accepted the demise of monarchy and didn’t look back, Muslims never got over the abolishment of the caliphate and continued to seek its return. The fact that the order imposed by an empire went away without being replaced by a democratic system with people's rights and rule of law, is a main cause of instability.
During the Cold War, both the US and the Soviet Union extended their tentacles into the Middle East, with the US establishing treaties in North Africa and Saudi Arabia and the Soviet Union trying to influence Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the relative balance and superficial calm went away, leading to many governments collapsing and going into turmoil.
During the Q&A period, I contested the assertion that the demise of the Ottoman Empire was a main cause of instability in the Middle East. Instead, I suggested that the fall of the Ottomans was an effect, not a cause. Britain ruled India for more than 1.5 centuries before the Ottomans fell, and they made mischief in Afghanistan before that fall. The Brits moved their focus westward to Iran upon the discovery of oil in 1908, some 15 years before the Ottomans fell. One can conclude from this timeline that perhaps the Ottomans were pushed out rather than collapse under structural problems and internal rot.
2024/10/14 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] The last nobel prize for 2024, Economic Sciences (see the next item below). [Center] Science magazine cover feature (see item 3 beleow). [Right] John Polkinghorne's Quantum Theory: A Very Short Introduction (see the last item below).
(2) Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, 2024: Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson were honored for their research on global inequality explaining the differences in prosperity between nations, and for their research into how institutions affect prosperity.
(3) Graphene at 20: A special section of Science magazine, Oct. 11, 2024, celebrates the 20th birthday of graphene, the atom-thin carbon sheets with surprising properties (e.g., better at carrying electricity than any metal, a superb heat conductor, and hundreds of times stronger than steel). Although some of the imagined applications, such as space elevators, have not materialized, there is no shortage of exciting applications.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Nearly 100 people are still missing in North Carolina in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. [NBC News]
- November 9 wedding plans replaced by 4 funerals in the wake of Hurricane Helene. [The News & Observer]
- A Sikh activist's murder led Canada to expel several Indian diplomats, with India reciprocating. [WSJ]
- K-Mart, the store that once sold everything, everywhere, is about to close its last full-size US store.
(5) NASA sends a spacecraft to Jupiter's icy moon, Europa, a frozen "ocean world" judged to be the likeliest place in the Solar System to harbor life.
(6) Book review: Polkinghorne, John, Quantum Theory: A Very Short Introduction, unabridged 4-hour audiobook, read by Dennis Holland, Tantor Media, 2021.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This is yet another wonderfully-written and accessible title in Oxford's "Very Short Introduction" series. You can learn about virtually any subject from one of the hundreds of titles in the series.
The discovery in the 1920s, by Werner Heisenberg and Ervin Schrodinger, among others, that Newtonian mechanics and Maxwell's equations (classical physics) cannot explain phenomena at atomic and subatomic levels and that determinism must be abandoned in favor of a probabilistic view is hailed as perhaps the greatest scientific discovery of all time.
Such a short introduction to the immensely complex subject of quantum mechanics is barely enough to introduce and define the key terms and concepts of the field. Polkinghorne gives the reader a basic understanding of quantum theory and helps him/her decide whether a detailed study of the field from one of the many excellent books is something you want/should pursue.
Here are some suggestions for further reading, given on a Web page entitled "The 6 Best Quantum Physics Books on the Planet."
2024/10/13 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top row] Visiting Dr. Mahmood Nahvi in Arroyo Grande: Today, thanks to the generosity of Drs. Mohamad Navab of UCLA and Reza Sarmast visiting from Norway, I got to see an old colleague from Arya-Mehr/Sharif University of Technology. We drove north to Arroyo Grande, close to San Luis Obispo, and were treated to a sumptuous lunch and heavenly desserts by Dr. Nahvi and his wife Zari, as well as to an enjoyable conversation about our memories from 50 years ago. The book on electric circuits was gifted to me and autographed. [Bottom left & Center] Another book by Dr. Mahmood Nahvi. [Bottom right] Northern Lights at my neck of the woods: Photo snapped by my daughter on her iPhone and slightly edited by me.
(2) The ability to synthesize information is now more important than knowledge acquisition: "The hallmark of expertise is no longer how much you know. It's how well you synthesize. Information scarcity rewarded knowledge acquisition. Information abundance requires pattern recognition. It's not enough to connect facts. The future belongs to those who connect dots." [From Adam Grant Newsletter, Oct. 13, 2024]
(3) My course on the science and engineering behind democratic elections: Now in its third week, the UCSB graduate-level seminar being offered for the first time this fall is a wonderful learning experience for me and my students. You can find out more about the course and follow along through its Web site, which contains numerous references, problems with solutions, and PDF files of the lecture slides.
2024/10/12 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] It's easy to claim economic success if you don't have to back it up with data (WSJ chart for US GDP growth). [Center] Some humorous mathematical simplifications. [Right] US federal debt-to-GDP ratio since 1940 (see the next item below).
(2) Historical trend of the US federal debt-to-GDP ratio: The first big bump on the left was caused by World War II. The smaller bump in the middle coincides with Reagan and Bush Sr. presidencies. The final bump on the right started during Obama years and rose further during the Trump administration.
(3) In 1977, a space radio signal, known as the “Wow! signal,” was detected, and we still don't know its origin. It lasted 72 seconds and has never been heard again. [Source: Star Talk]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Kamala Harris introduces herself and her policies in this 21-minute segment on "60 Minutes."
- A Texas doctor's encounter with four Saudi princesses kept drugged and locked up for two decades.
- Adam Grant, in his newsletter: "Generosity is not just a sign of virtue—it's a mark of intelligence."
- Top-5 happiest US states in 2024, according to WalletHub: Hawaii, Maryland, New Jersey, Utah, Delaware.
- This is a physical demonstration of the Pythagorean Theorem, using flowing beads. [GIF]
- Republican candidate in Illinois tells his Indigenous election rival to go back where she came from!
(5) Dangers of aging water infrastructure: "In September 2023, more than 11,000 people died after torrential rainfall triggered the collapse of two dams in Libya. In May 2024, a flash flood in Mashhad, Iran, led to loss of lives because of poorly designed and malfunctioning stormwater drainage systems. Developing nations will increasingly confront similar hazards as their aging water infrastructure encounters more frequent and intense storms, population growth, and urbanization. Financial shortfalls, mismanagement, and corruption complicate efforts to upgrade infrastructure, exacerbating the dangers." [From Science magazine, issue of Oct. 11, 2024]
(6) TED talks turn 40: Using the slogan "Ideas Worth Spreading," TED, an acronym meant to convey the group’s interest in technology, entertainment, and design, launched its first conference in 1984. Today's TED is a mixed bag, covering topics from creativity & poverty to procrastination & orgasms, featuring speakers ranging from Naomi Klein & Monica Lewinsky to Bono. Perhaps the rapid expansion of TED and its many affiliated TEDx programs has led to a sacrifice in quality. I, for one, still enjoy watching an occasional TED talk, but choose the topics carefully in order to avoid exhaustion.
2024/10/11 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Nobel Peace Prize (see the next item below). [Center] Tonight, I attended an enjoyable Billy Joel tribute concert by Billy Nation at Santa Barbara's Lobero Theater. [Right] On public education (see the last item below).
(2) Nobel Peace Prize, 2024: The Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo, a grass-roots movement of atomic bomb survivors, was recognized "for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again."
(3) AGs from 13 states and DC sue TikTok: The company is accused of violating consumer protection laws by designing its video-sharing app in ways that lead to compulsive use, exposing young users to mental & physical risk. [Washington Post]
(4) Young Nobel Laureates: It seems that this year's winners of Nobel Prizes in science are younger than usual. It used to be that the Prizes were awarded for work completed decades ago. But now, we see, for example, that John M. Jumper of Google DeepMind wins the Chemistry Prize at age 39, only 7 years after earning a PhD. He is, of course far from being the youngest Nobel Laureate (see this Web page). In sciences, 25-year-old Lawrence Bragg (Physics, 1915), was the youngest.
(5) Public education in a democracy: Public schools' mission is to teach children what they need to know in order to help shape a principled, thriving, and prosperous society. The fact that they have been less than successful in doing so does not give every parent the right to dictate the curriculum based on his/her personal preferences. Parents dissatisfied with the public-education curricula have options. One option is to participate in shaping the school curricula on a democratic basis, where you convince others by logical arguments not by shouting or name-calling. Another option is to use home or private schooling. Dictating what other children learn or which books they read isn't one of the options.
2024/10/10 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
day in Tehran, Iran, ca. 1976" />
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] Nobel Prizes in Chemistry & Literature (see the next two items below). [Top right] Talangor Group talk on US politics (see the last item below). [Bottom left] The onset of a broader war in the Middle East has temporarily overshadowed the struggles of Iranian women to gain their rights and to be treated with basic human dignity. Stand with women in Iran! [Bottom center] A day after the anniversary of the October 7, 2023, atrocities, keffiyehs are out in full force and pro-Hamas/Palestine protests have resumed on the UCSB campus: Protesters are peaceful for now and have not disrupted the university’s normal functions. [Bottom right] Throwback Thursday: A rainy day in Tehran, Iran, ca. 1976.
(2) Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 2024: The honor went half to David Baker (U. Washington) for contributions to "computational protein design" and half to Demis Hassabis & John Jumper (Google DeepMind AI Lab), for work on "protein structure prediction." This is the second award this year that points to the central role of computation and AI.
(3) Nobel Prize in Literature, 2024: Best known for her novel The Vegetarian, South Korean author Han Kang is honored for "her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas."
(4) Tonight's Talangor Group meeting: Bijan Kian spoke under the title "History and Origins of Differences Between US Republican and Democratic Parties." Mr. Kian has a long history of involvement in business management and government service, including senior positions in the administrations of the 43rd, 44th, and 45th US Presidents.
Eisenhower entered the political scene with help from the Dulles Brothers, who were lawyers involved with negotiating Iran's oil contracts with the British. Subsequently, Iran's oil was nationalized and the Dulles Brothers essentially failed in their mission.
Mr. Kian is a member of the Republican Party, but he stressed that he will not be talking about current politics and presidential candidates. He began by pondering why a wealthy nation such as Iran has millions of people below the poverty line.
Both parties claim that they want to limit the scope of the government, but historically, the Democratic Party has been paying attention the poor and needy, priorities that tend to produce larger governments and higher taxes. Republicans favor businesses and view themselves as defenders of capitalism, with fewer regulations.
Today's Republicans do not support their party out of philosophical or even ideological convictions. They assess their own economic status, income, and purchasing power.
The extent of cooperation between the two parties has varied. Reagan had a good relationship with Democratic congressional leaders. Obama was more suspicious of the opposing party. The American political system is based on a balance of power, with a government that rules from the center. When the political pendulum swings wildly to one side, it will eventually return to its natural position in the middle.
Today, we face an American nation that is bifurcated, threatening the "United" part in United States of America. One may wonder why a Pennsylvania miner, for example, votes for a candidate whose policies would eliminate his job or otherwise hurt his economic status. Is he not aware of his self-interest or are there other factors at play?
Mr. Kian said that his primary focus is on world peace, that is, changing the current status that has been created primarily by Russia and Iran.
A lively discussion ensued, which continued even after Mr. Kian left the meeting due to time constraints.
2024/10/08 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Nobel Prize in Physics (see the next item below). [Center] Our family gathering in Ventura, California, a few days ago. [Right] Donald Trump's dream, according to MAGA postings on social media: Please kick this sick man out of politics once and for all. It's just this one election next month. He will be too old to run in 2028.
(2) Nobel Prize in Physics 2024: John Hopfield (Princeton U.) and Geoffrey Hinton (U. Toronto) are honored "for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks." The selection of computing researchers in physics is a welcome change.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Donald Trump has secretly spoken with Vladimir Putin as many as 7 times since leaving office. [NYT]
- Hurricane Milton, one of the most-powerful storms on record, will tear through Florida tomorrow.
- Facebook memory from Oct. 8, 2018: A Persian sentence with nothing but verbs.
(4) Iran uses propaganda alongside terrorism: Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi has issued a scathing indictment of the former high-level Iranian government official Seyed Hossein Mousavian, now at Princeton, and institutions that host him, because of his alleged role in assassinating Iranian dissidents.
(5) Flower Piano: For a few days last month, 12 grand pianos were placed under the trees in San Francisco's Botanical Garden, allowing players and listeners to enjoy the music in a beautiful setting.
2024/10/07 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top Left] First 2024 Nobel Prize (see the next item below). [Top center] Protest movement against executions in Iran (see the last item below). [Top right] Anniversary of the October 7 Hamas atrocities (see item 3 below). [Bottom left] Math puzzle: In this diagram with a square, a circle, and four equal semicircles, what is the ratio R/r? [Bottom center] Beauty for the eyes and beauty for the mind in one frame. [Bottom right] Math puzzle: Given four squares with areas A, B, C, D, as shown, find the ratio (A + B)/(C + D).
(2) Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 2024: Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun were honored for the discovery of microRNA, which plays a crucial role in determining how organisms develop and function.
(3) Anniversary of the October 7 terrorist attack on southern Israel: The brutal Hamas terrorists slaughtered 1200 civilians, while joyfully posting their savagery on social media, and kidnapped ~250. As they observe this anniversary, residents of villages that were attacked are slowly returning home.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- US DOJ indicts 68 members of a Neo-Nazi, White-Supremacist group on drug and other charges.
- The Israeli media have published this chart of IRGC's command structure: Is Israel sending a signal?
- Fewer college students have the ability or focus to read even a simple book, let alone a challenging one.
- Taiwan faces a serious electricity shortage, threatening the future of 68% of the world's chip production.
(5) While still recovering from the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene, Floridians are bracing for the approaching category-5 Hurricane Milton.
(6) The asteroid that hit Earth and wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago was not alone: During the same era, a second smaller space rock smashed into the sea off the coast of West Africa creating a large crater.
(7) Playing the citations game: China has risen in the citations rankings because of its immense population and an unusually high number of citations to the work of Chinese scientists from within China.
(8) The pace of executions has picked up in Iran: Amid a continued post-election execution surge and increased suppression of peaceful prison protests in Iran, Norway-based Iran Human Rights NGO and 67 human rights organizations across four continents expressed their support for the ongoing "No Death Penalty Tuesdays" weekly hunger strike movement currently spanning 17 Iranian prisons. Please support this movement in the lead-up to World Day Against the Death Penalty on October 10.
2024/10/05 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Paying lip service to the rule of law while supporting a criminal who broke multiple laws and was caught for it is hypocrisy to the extreme. [Top center] "We are not going back" is a slogan embraced by Democrats and many Republicans alike. [Top right] J. D. Vance blames his mom's drug addiction on the situation at our border with Mexico: She actually fed her habit by stealing drugs from the hospital where she worked as a nurse.[Bottom left] T'is the season for scary movies. [Bottom center] American women are not going back, and we men will follow them forward. [Bottom right] Nick Otre Le Vant'a On Progress in Physics and Subjectivity Theory (see the last item below).
(2) As we approach the anniversary of October 7, five Jewish college students have been assaulted in recent days. A group of Palestine supporters plan vigils on October 7!
(3) Book review: Otre Le Vant, Nick, On Progress in Physics and Subjectivity Theory: An Amateur's Meanderings as Inspiration for Actual Physicists, self-published, 2024.
[My 3-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I approached this self-published book, sent to me kindly by the author, with caution. As I had suspected, trouble began early on. There is a 4 x 4 table in Chapter 1 whose rows and columns are labeled Object, Movement, Space, Time. The idea is to show that the four notions are inter-dependent. In some cases, actual theories and dates of discoveries are cited, but, at the bottom of the page, we read, "As for cell SO [Space-Object], which asserts that there can be no Space without Objects, several discoveries throughout the 20th century support this idea." The non-physicist reader is left hanging without any further details.
The book is composed of three numbered chapters, sandwiched between a preface and an afterword, ending with a glossary.
Chapter 1: Questioning Everything (pp. 1-28)
Chapter 2: Subjectivity Theory (pp. 29-89)
Chapter 3: Achieving Progress in Physics (pp. 90-302)
The entire book is written in the form of a conversation between A (Alice) and B (Bobby). This isn't unprecedented, as Galileo used the format in his 1632 Italian-language book, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, comparing the Copernican system with the traditional Ptolemaic system, and Amazon is currently selling a book series, The Dialogues: Conversations about the Nature of the Universe.
We read on p. 8: "Let's take Newton's unification of gravity as an example. He realized that the force that keeps the planets in orbit is the same as the one pulling the apple to the ground. Before Newton's discovery, those two phenomena were regarded as entirely separate. While this new, unified theory is also wrong—remember, everything is wrong—it's less wrong as there is now only one wrong theory instead of two wrong theories. Making something up isn't good, but at least it's better than making two things up." With this logic, we are better off developing no theories, because then we'd have zero thing wrong!
By the way, the discussion above is reminiscent of a proposal I encountered when I was a graduate student. The suggestion was that a paper of m pages should be accepted and published only if it makes other papers of total length of at least m + 1 obsolete. The m-page paper is itself wrong and will be made obsolete by an even shorter paper in due course, thus reducing our worries about information explosion. Eventually, over many decades or centuries, we will arrive at a 1-page paper that contains the essence of all human knowledge, which is, of course, wrong!
An interesting feature of the book is a set of profiles covering the lives and work of 12 top physicists. Two-thirds of the parents of these physicists were middle-class (2 were poor; 2 were wealthy). They were equally divided between religious and non-religious. The number of their siblings was nearly uniformly distributed between 0 and 5.
Throughout, I took in the ideas with a huge grain of salt, as suggested by the author himself in a full-page graphic at the beginning of the book.
2024/10/03 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Happy Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year Festival): The new Hebrew calendar year 5785 will start tomorrow and, like all Jewish holidays, is celebrated beginning with the night before. Observance of Rosh Hashanah involves eating several kinds of fruits and vegetables. For example, honey-dipped apple represents sweetness and pomegranate signifies fruitfulness. [Top center] Throwback Thursday: How babies used to fly on airplanes. [Top right] CACM cover (see the next item below). [Bottom left] A top-heavy Earth: Nearly 7 times more people live in the Northern Hemisphere than in the Southern Hemisphere. [Bottom center] Turnout was pretty good for the 2020 US election: Let's make 2024's turnout even better! [Bottom right] Lisi Rankin's A People's History of Computing in the United States (see the last item below).
(2) Communications of the ACM cover feature for October 2024: "In between the two extreme visions of AI as a servant and AI as a sentient fighter-lover, resides an important and practical alternative: AI as a provocateur. A provocateur does not complete your report. It does not draft your email. It does not write your code. It does not generate slides. Rather, it critiques your work. Where are your arguments thin? What are your assumptions and biases? What are the alternative perspectives? Is what you are doing worth doing in the first place? Rather than optimize speed
and efficiency, a provocateur engages in discussions, offers counterarguments, and asks questions to stimulate our thinking."
(3) Book review: Rankin, Lisi, A People's History of Computing in the United States, unabridged 10-hour audiobook, read by Bernadette Dunne, Blackstone Audio, 2018.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Rankin's title is reminiscent of Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, in which history is viewed from the eyes of ordinary citizens, as opposed to politicians, military leaders, and industrialists. Computing, too, isn't the brainchild of a handful of male heroes, but a product of a multitude of ordinary people who got involved passionately and early on.
A prevailing myth in tech circles is that Silicon Valley has been the center of all important advances in computing. Even though big tech companies have been very innovative recently, from a historical standpoint, people (students and educators), were the driving engines for key advances. For example, Dartmouth College and University of Illinois were two important innovation hubs in the 1960s and 1970s where citizens engaged in the development of computing for the public good. Communication, game-playing, and social interactions were all there.
Rankin argues that "personal computing," the ability of people to access, create, and form communities around computer resources, existed way before computing devices were marketed to the masses and that the Internet was not a prerequisite for social computing. Furthermore, she dismisses the notion of "a digital America dependent on the work of a handful of male tech geniuses." In reality, ordinary citizens participated widely in computing through the use of time-shared systems. The contrast between these involved citizens and today's predominantly consumer-minded tech users is striking.
"Geographically, innovative educational experiments were conducted in New Hampshire, Minnesota, and Illinois, locales that are not synonymous with digital culture in many people's minds. Today, "we think of public schools and college classrooms as the last stop for mature technology," but the experiments just cited were really producers of new ideas and technology that were later exploited by big tech. The programming language BASIC, developed at Dartmouth, became the language of computing citizens worldwide.
2024/10/01 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Happy IEEE Day! Today, the Institute of Electrical and Elrctronic Engineers celebrates the first time in history when engineers worldwide gathered to share their technical ideas in 1884. [Center] Five weeks from the US presidential election: National poll averages seem to have stabilized into a 3-point lead for Kamala Harris over Donald Trump, but results in battleground states remain extremely close. [Right] This homeowner speaks for many of us.
(2) Iran launches 500 missiles toward Israel: Multiple hits on Tel Aviv are reported and the Ben Gurion airport is closed. Israeli authorities say they were ready for the attack. The attack caused minimal loss of life; A Palestinian man was killed in the West Bank. There were, however, damages to buildings, infrastructure, and military facilities.[Later reports cite ~200 missiles.]
(3) Many researchers pursue STEM fields to get away from the challenges of writing: They are often surprised to find out that writing plays an important role in science and technology.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The snake of Islamist terror in the Middle East is left with a head and no body!
- While continuing to bombard Lebanon, Israel starts hitting Houthi targets in Yemen.
- Hurricane Helene's death toll surpasses 100: Recovery efforts have begun, but they will take months.
- Former President Jimmy Carter, who turns 100 today, is delighted with the Harris campaign.
- US port workers strike across the East and Gulf Coasts: Major supply-chain disruptions are expected.
- Climate scientist Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico's first female and first Jewish president, takes offices.
(5) Computing with bacteria: Researchers at India's Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics combined genetically engineered bacteria to act as biological computers for solving various problems. These "bactoneurons" were arranged in an assortment of combinations to perform 12 tasks, such as identifying prime numbers and vowels. The bacteria cultures work together as a single-layer artificial neural network, and their ability to self-replicate means they could be produced cheaply at scale.
2024/09/29 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Young mom holding her two toddlers and, years later, held by the grown sons. [Center] Some of the wonderful protest art arising from Iran's women-led #WomanLifeFreedom movement. [Right] Country music singer/songwriter and actor Kris Kristofferson dead at 88: RIP. The Rhodes Scholar, who earned a master's degree in English literature from Oxford, will be remembered for ballads like "Me and Bobby McGee" & "Help Me Make It Through the Night" and his role against Barbra Streisand in "A Star is Born."
(2) Long-time Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, 64, killed in Beirut air strike. He was in a bunker 60 feet underground when struck and killed. Iranians celebrated Nasrallah's death, remembering the time when he openly boasted that all expenses of Hezbollah are paid by Iran, adding "if Iran has money, we have money."
(3) Memory loss is both scary and natural: In 2010, James Collins wrote an essay in which he describes books that he loved, about which he remembers nothing.
(4) IEEE Computer Society elections: Grace A. Lewis, a Principal Researcher at the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute, has been elected to lead the IEEE Computer Society, as President-Elect during 2025 and as President during 2026. A good friend of mine, Dr. Ladan Tahvildari (U. Waterloo), is one of 6 members elected to 3-year terms on the Society's Board of Governors.
(5) SNL kicked off its 50th season last night: A new movie dramatizes the story of the chaotic 90 minutes before the first episode in 1975 of what would become Saturday Night Live.
(6) Yesterday's arts & crafts market in Isla Vista: With UCSB students back on campus, the market was busier than usual. My daughter participated and did good business. Unfortunately, I couldn't visit. [Image]
(7) "The Apprentice": A new film about the young Donald Trump and how despised & disbarred attorney Roy Cohen shaped him into what we see today, thus affecting the course of American history.
2024/09/27 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Quote of the day: Hannah Arendt, on constant lying designed to promote disbelief. [Center] Humor: Here's how to find Kentucky on a US map. You're welcome! [Right] Talk on Iran's protest art (see the next item below).
(2) Today's book talk: "Women, Art, Freedom: Artists and Street Politics in Iran" was the title of an insightful talk by Dr. Pamela Karimi (Cornell University). There were ~55 attendees.
Drawing on a broad spectrum of historical and theoretical sources, this new book reveals the origins and inspirations of Iran's protest art, with a focus on interconnections between the public sphere, women's bodies, and feminist viewpoints. Dr. Karimi showed photos of street dancing, art installations, and other activities as examples of protest art in Iran.
(3) Around the world in 175 days: This week is the centennial of the first flight around the world, completed by two aircraft out of four that flew together in 1924.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Canada, Germany, Holland, and Australia want to take the Taliban to International Criminal Court.
- Donald Trump and his minions believe in the rule of lies!
- Trump, embraced by the Christian Nationalists as their savior, is the polar opposite of Jesus.
- Allowing religious zealots to run the world? We have tried it before, and the result was the Dark Ages.
- "Violence of Benevolence & the Struggles for Women's Rights in Iran" (57-minute talk: Arzoo Osanloo).
- SNL will turn 50 in October 2025: A new movie offers a fictional reimagining of the show's first episode.
- A little puzzler: What temperature has the same numerical representation in Kelvin and Fahrenheit?
(5) President Pezeshkian has said that Iran wants to be in peace with the world: Yeah, but before that, try to be in peace with your country's women, artists, students, journalists, and ethnic/religious minorities.
(6) On restoring mobility after spinal cord injuries: We humans walk, run, and climb stairs without consciously thinking about the highly complex interplay of muscle activations for each step. Interestingly, stepping can be generated without any communication between the brain and the spinal cord. For those with injuries that disrupt the communication between the brain and the spinal cord, the automatic ability to step is often lost, leading to mobility impairments or even permanent paralysis. Given that stepping can occur independently of brain input, should we continue to focus on restoring communication between the brain and spinal cord or should we instead target neurons located in the spinal cord itself?
2024/09/25 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Beauty from three natural elements (sunset, clouds, birds). [Center] My graduate seminar course on mathematical and engineering aspects of voting and elections in the campus news (see the next item below). [Right] Aubrey Clayton's Bernoulli's Fallacy (see the last item below).
(2) My course in the campus news: The feature article of UCSB Current, UC Santa Barbara's official news site, is about the ECE 594BB graduate seminar I will be teaching this quarter. "I want the students to understand that our voting system is flawed and that voting is not as simple as what we might think ... It's complicated, and we should work toward removing the flaws of our election system, even in the face of mathematical proof that a perfect voting system is impossible."
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- California sues ExxonMobile for deliberately lying about plastics being recyclable.
- The quest to build a radio telescope on the Moon, pioneering mining and manufacturing in space.
- The seven types of anxiety disorders (from generalized anxiety to social anxiety). [13-minute video]
- Facebook memory from Sep. 25, 2022: Rosh Hashanah at my mom's, two months before her passing.
(4) Book review: Clayton, Aubrey, Bernoulli's Fallacy: Statistical Illogic and the Crisis of Modern Science, Columbia U. Press, 2021. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
There is a long-running feud between science and statistics with regard to the statistical methods used across experimental science. Far from being a minor academic quibble, it underlies a reproducibility crisis now threatening entire disciplines. As statistics has entered more and more aspects of our lives, the error at the root of the dispute, which stems from a misunderstanding of probability and its role in making inferences from observations, shapes important decisions in medicine, law, and public policy.
The association of a fallacy with Jacob Bernoulli [1655-1705], the founder of probability theory and a member of a family of mathematicians and scientists with numbers, theorems, and laws named after them, seems bizarre. The fallacy arises from a confusion between the probability of data given a hypothesis and the probability of a hypothesis given the data. Clayton tells us that significance testing, a widely used method, is based on Bernoulli's Fallacy and thus leads to false conclusions. In particular, he points out irreproducible results published in top social-sciences journals which have made significance testing a prerequisite for publication.
Clayton discusses the racist past of statistics (eugenics) and points out that the frequentist view of probability, used extensively in teaching the concepts, is misguided. Defining probability as "the frequency of occurrence of an event in proportion to the total number of possible events that could have occurred" and then using this definition as the sole basis for drawing inferences about the real world (e.g., deriving population parameters from sample parameters) is at the core of the fallacy. What is missing is a use of our knowledge of the world or "the prior." The latter is integrated into Bayes Theorem. The Bayesian method is still not well-understood, or is otherwise ignored, by some statisticians.
In way of conclusion, Clayton discusses “the way out” of the fallacy, which entails 5 recommendations:
- Abandon the frequentist interpretation and its associated language
- Don't fear the prior
- Data you didn't get aren't as important as hypotheses you didn't assume
- Get used to approximate answers
- Give up on objectivity; aim for validity instead
In short, the way out consists of abandoning much of conventional views in statistics, including the claim that statistical methods are objective, embracing the messiness of the world around us, and taking the Bayesian approach. An important prerequisite is to view all probability as conditional on something (background info), rather than absolute.
This 78-minute book talk by the author covers the book's key ideas.
2024/09/24 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] UCSB welcomes its class of 2028 with pre-instructional activities: Fall 2024 classes begin on Thursday, September 26. [Top center & right] Moving my office (see the next item below). [Bottom left] Iran's criminal Islamist regime tries to silence the brave mothers of those it has killed/abducted: The regime prevents these "justice seekers" from holding memorials for their loved ones and, in many cases, imprisons them or roughs them up. [Bottom center] IranWire cartoon of the day: The UN and US welcome a large delegation of representatives from Iran's criminal Islamist regime. [Bottom right] Optical illusion: This seemingly bulging figure is composed of squares and rectangles that are horizontally and vertically aligned!
(2) My UCSB office is being moved from 5155 Harold Frank Hall (the former Engineering I) to 1816 Ellison Hall: This notice board is at the entry of my soon-to-be former office. My office move provides an opportunity to get rid of decades of accumulated junk. The thousands of reprints in these two file cabinets weren't junk when I acquired them by photocopying and, in some cases, sending requests to the authors. These reprints, and hard copies of journals to which I subscribed, formed my archive of reference material before the Internet.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Chain explosions suggest that residential buildings in South Lebanon are used as ammunition depots.
- California sues ExxonMobile for deliberately lying about plastics being recyclable.
- The quest to build a powerful radio telescope on the Moon, pioneering mining and manufacturing in space.
(4) Final thought for the day: A new book by investigative reporters Russ Buettner & Susanne Craig attributes much of Donald Trump's success to a lifelong string of astounding good luck: first his inheritance, then lenient treatment by banks, then being refashioned, late in life, as a reality-TV business genius. Is there finally evidence that Trump's luck is running out?
2024/09/23 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Distribution of captures on chessboard in 300 games by strongest players. [Center] I have the very best friends and fans. [Right] Daniel Susskind's Growth (see the last item below).
(2) Coal mine explosion in Tabas, Iran, kills at least 51: Money that could have been spent on improving the mine's safety was diverted to building an extensive network of tunnels in Gaza.
(3) Pakistani-American Lina Khan, 35, is firmly in control as FTC Chair: At the Federal Trade Commission, Chair Lina Khan's mission is breaking illegal monopolies, blocking mergers that stifle competition, and protecting consumers. [13-minute video]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Escalation of war in the Middle East: The latest Israeli air strikes on Lebanon have reportedly killed 270.
- A devastating report on global threats & American weakness is issued by a bipartisan commission.
- Microsoft agrees to buy power for its data centers from a resurrected Three Mile Island nuclear plant.
- Islamist Mohammad Jafar Mahallati Scandal at Oberlin College: An Interview with Writer Roya Hakakian.
- How did an Islamist become a tenured professor at Oberlin College? [47-minute video]
- Who's smarter? She has a Juris Doctorate. He threatened to sue his schools if they released his transcripts.
(5) Shape-shifting wheels: Inspired by the surface tension of a droplet of liquid, this adjustable wheel changes shape in real-time to move over uneven surfaces and high obstacles.
(6) Book review: Susskind, Daniel, Growth: A History and a Reckoning, unabridged 10-hour audiobook, read by the author, Tantor Audio, 2024. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Politicians keep talking about growth and want more of it at all cost. But what exactly is growth? Susskind traces the history of growth, coming to the conclusion that it is a relatively new concept dating back to the mid-20th century. At the time, economists were thinking about the cost of war and whether a country can afford it. They came to the conclusion that the answer lied in the total size of an economy, which they did not know how to measure. After several iterations, the notion of GDP was developed, which also provided a means for quantifying growth. Since then, politicians and, to some extent the public, have become obsessed with growth, because it is intimately linked to a higher standard of living.
Growth is at the center of our politics these days. No one knows what causes it, yet politicians argue endlessly about how to get more of it and environmentalists point to its link to climate change, making us doubt whether we should have any growth at all. Susskind, a professor at King’s College, London, provides an informative study of the idea, its past, and its potential future. After enumerating the benefits and down sides of growth, Susskind comes to the conclusion that we should not ignore growth but putting it front and center in our policy-making is likely a mistake.
Quantifying growth is less than a century old. Growth itself is a phenomenon that arose after the Industrial Revolution, when the explosive rise in our standard of living began. Before then, humans lived at subsistence level for millennia, what Susskind calls “the Long Stagnation.” According to Susskind, the pursuit of useful ideas, together with new technologies inspired by those ideas, are the most-likely causes of growth.
One reason politicians are enamored with growth is that it offers an easy fix for political disagreements, because “by pursuing growth, you could sidestep many of the practical tradeoffs in political life.” When the GDP rises and everyone has more money in the bank, tolerating other problems becomes much easier. Proponents of growth sometimes snap back at degrowth advocates, who aim to save the rainforests by actually shrinking the GDP, thus: “Medieval peasants would have killed for your air fryer, so quit complaining!” These two extreme views create a growth dilemma.
A rising standard of living tends to accompany population shrinkage, leading to fewer young minds to innovate and to implement the new ideas. In fact, population growth, which has been a key component of economic growth, is already on the way out in many countries. Do we really have to go back to emphasizing population growth? In my humble opinion, advances in artificial intelligence may obviate the need for population growth as a prerequisite to economic growth.
2024/09/22 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Ingenious design: A wristwatch that uses magnetism to hold two small balls in proper places to act as the hour and minute hands. [Top center] Musings of a curious engineer: Bridge foundation in water. [Top right] Mahsa's Revolution: The second anniversary of Mahsa Amini's death while in the custody of Iran's morality police was observed throughout the world over the past week. #WomanLifeFreedom [Bottom left] Pre-Islamic Iran: Holding hands, Persepolis. [Bottom center] FedEx-delivered plaque of my Dr. Amin Lifetime Achievement Award, presented in absentia on August 31, 2024, during SUTA’s reunion event. [Bottom right] Simone De Beauvoir's The Second Sex (see the last item below).
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Trump's late-night meltdown over Truth Social: Bashes Oprah Winfrey for her event with Kamala Harris.
- How Elon Musk went from an innovator & tech genius to conspiracy theorist & MAGA mouthpiece.
- Donald Trump's assertion that Jews could cost him the election raises fear of anti-Semitic reprisals.
- Senator spews hate against an Arab-American witness at a hearing about hate crimes.
(3) Book review: De Beauvoir, Simone (translated by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier), The Second Sex, 2010 (originally published in 1949). [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This book, often described as the Bible of feminism, gets an amazing 4.6 stars on Amazon (based on 1856 ratings) and 4.2 stars on GoodReads (42K+ ratings). De Beauvoir [1908-1986], a radical French philosopher, writer, and political activist, offers an analysis of why women have always had less power than men. In 1972, de Beauvoir declared herself a feminist, after she reached the conclusion that a socialist revolution by itself would not be enough to emancipate women, as she had previously thought.
The Second Sex tackles the social status of women from the beginning of civilization to the modern day. De Beauvoir's central argument is that women have been forced to take a secondary role to men since the earliest times and that the whole human condition is viewed in male terms and is described in language that excludes women. She is frustrated by the way women are treated as legal minors, much like children, leading to women's absence from great stories of history. She presents her arguments using three frames of reference.
- Historical materialism, which addresses the influence of socioeconomics and class on shaping history.
- Existentialism, a philosophy that emphasizes personal freedom and choice in a world lacking a higher power.
- Psychoanalysis, which examines the subconscious causes of human behavior.
Aspects of de Beauvoir's analysis appear out of date in our modern society, but they caused a lot of criticism and debate in the conservative French society.
De Beauvoir's meticulously-researched book paved the way for the feminist movement. She argued that if human identity is socially constructed, as Sartre believed, then femininity is created in the same way. One is not born a woman but becomes a woman through social conditioning. Written just after World War II, The Second Sex is divided into two books.
Book 1: Facts and Myths
Book 2: Women's Life Today
De Beauvoir asserts that throughout history, women have been cast as the other, because they are viewed only in relation to men. This is dehumanizing. Cultural understandings of femininity are rooted in male fear and male desire. Women's sole purpose in society is to satisfy such male longings. Without men pursuing them, seducing them, and marrying them women have no reason to exist. De Beauvoir viewed women as being complicit in their secondary status. Women feel more solidarity with their fathers and husbands than they do with other women. She believed that without solidarity the fight for women's freedom will fail.
Up until the women's movement of the 1970s, humanities scholars who studied the condition of women in society were not taken seriously. According to De Beauvoir, women were enslaved before men were. Subsequently, the enslavement was institutionalized in the form of marriage. In one of her most interesting chapters, "The Married Woman," she offers numerous quotations from the novels and diaries of Virginia Woolf, Colette, Edith Wharton, Sophia Tolstoy and others. She also scrutinizes the manner in which various male authors, from Montaigne to Stendhal to D. H. Lawrence, have represented women in their written works, and, in many cases, how they treated their wives.
Upon its publication, The Second Sex was totally banned in Spain and was placed on the Catholic Church's list of forbidden books. Controversies also surrounded the book's English translations. The first English translation by H. M. Pershley in 1953 was criticized for various errors, misinterpretation of several of De Beauvoir's ideas, and arbitrary deletion of one-third of its contents, including the all-important chapter on marriage. The authoritative English translation by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier, reviewed here, did not become available until 2009.
2024/09/20 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Math puzzle: Given that the exterior shape is a square, find the measure of the middle angle with a question mark. [Top center] Chris Funk's Drought, Flood, Fire (see the last item below). [Top right] Math puzzle: Given two squares as shown, find the length x. [Bottom row] Humorous signs.
(2) Book review: Funk, Chris, Drought, Flood, Fire: How Climate Change Contributes to Catastrophes, unabridged 8-hour audiobook, read by Trevor White, Cambridge University Press Audio, 2021.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This book, by Professor Chris Funk of UCSB's Geography Department, begins with an extensive discussion of recent droughts in east Africa, events about which extensive data exist.
Since the 2015-2016 El Nino, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of extreme events. The frequency of extreme events has more than tripled since the early 1980s. The number of extremes has risen from ~200/year in 1980 to ~800/year in 2018. This book examines the extremes in the 2015-2019 time period, cataloguing their severity and explaining, in an accessible way, how climate change may have contributed to their magnitudes.
The book's 14 chapters are followed by an appendix offering resources for further reading and research. Following the introductory Chapter 1, Chapters 2-4 offer an overview of climate change and climate science, focusing on the fragility of our Earth, the Goldilocks planet. Chapters 5-12 discuss the 2015-2019 extreme heat waves and their consequences in droughts, floods, and fires, citing only some important examples. Chapters 13-14 conclude the book by painting a somewhat optimistic picture of the future.
Chapter 1. Climate Extremes, Climate Attribution, Extreme Event Attribution
Chapter 2. Welcome to an Awesome Planet: A Series of Delicate Balances Support Earth's Fragile Flame
Chapter 3. The Earth Is a Negentropic System, or "the Bright Side of Empty"
Chapter 4. Do-It-Yourself Climate Change Science
Chapter 5. Temperature Extremes – Impacts and Attribution: Shocks, Exposure, and Vulnerability
Chapter 6. Precipitation Extremes: Observations and Impacts
Chapter 7. Cyclones, and Typhoons
Chapter 8. Conceptual Models of Climate Change and Prediction, and How They Relate to Floods and Fires
Chapter 9. Climate Change Made the 2015-2016 El Nino More Extreme
Chapter 10. Bigger La Ninas and the East African Climate Paradox
Chapter 11. Fire and Drought in the Western United States
Chapter 12. Fire and Australia's Black Summer
Chapter 13. Driving toward +4 C on a Dixie Cup Planet
Chapter 14. We Can Afford to Wear a White Hat
2024/09/19 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Throwback Thursday: Old Santa Barbara Mission and its visitors, circa 1910. [Center] Pan American Highway is the longest drivable road in the world: It passes through 14 countries and is ~30,000 miles (~48,000 km) long. [Right] Talk on Las Cumbres Observatory (see the last item below).
(2) The IRS awarded three individuals $79 million under its whistleblower program, for information that helped recover $263.7 million from a tax cheat.
(3) City of Goleta to get a full-service train station: The new station on S. La Patera will be adjacent to the existing platform, which will continue to be used until the $32 million project's completion in 2026.
(4) Today, my daughter and I visited one of our favorite spots: The annual Planned Parenthood book sale, now in its 50th year. The scale and selection is overwhelming!
(5) Academic publishing: A UCLA professor files an antitrust lawsuit against the largest academic publishers, asserting that they achieve enormous monetary gain from collectively enforcing unpaid services by authors, editors, and reviewers.
(6) The Earth will get a new mini-moon for 57 days this fall: A passing asteroid will be attracted into Earth orbit but will eventually return to its own orbit around the Sun.
(7) Kamala Harris is super-qualified: She is the only presidential candidate with experience in all three branches of government, having served as AG, Senator, and VP.
(8) Last night's IEEE Central Coast Section tech talk: Annie Kirby, Head of Engineering and Operations for the Las Cumbres Observatory. (LCO), spoke under the title "Engineering the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network."
LCO is a nonprofit corporation based in Goleta, California, dedicated to advancing worldwide understanding of the universe through science and education with its global network of fully-robotic optical telescopes. LCO began its mission in 2005 and has been operating a global network continuously since May 2014.
The network currently consists of 25 telescopes (a mix of 2.0 m, 1.0 m, and 0.4 m), located at 7 sites around the world, together serving as a single integrated observatory. The observatory is leading the future of time domain astronomy with observations that capitalize on the network's unique capabilities.
Ms. Kirby presented the history and development of LCO, with an emphasis on her team's unique and dynamic engineering accomplishments. LCO used to have its own computing equipment, but now uses AWS.
2024/09/18 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] VOTE, and persuade others to vote. [Center] My entry in the New Yorker cartoon caption contest (#914): These phishing hooks can be deadlier than barbed hooks. [Right] Math puzzle: If the two black squares are identical, find the total area of the two red squares.
(2) One small step for a violinist, one giant step for humankind: In a history-making performance, astronaut Sarah Gillis plays "Rey's Theme," a piece John Williams composed for "Star Wars: The Force Awakens." Her solo violin part, recorded during the Polaris Dawn Mission and sent down to Earth via SpaceX's Starlink constellation, was synchronized with musicians on Earth. What a beautiful idea!
(3) On the invisibility of older women: "I have a big personality, and I have a certain level of professional competence, and I'm used to being taken seriously professionally. And suddenly, it's like I just vanished from the room. And I have to yell so much louder to be seen. ... I just want to walk down the street and have someone notice that I exist." [From The Atlantic]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Thousands of pagers belonging to Hezbollah militants explode simultaneously, killing 12+. injuring 100s.
- The Fed cuts interest rates by 0.5 point to stimulate the economy, now that inflation has cooled down.
- Energy efficiency: Brain-like neuromorphic device achieves massive 4.1 tera-operations / second / watt.
- Facebook bans Russian state media accounts for deceptive operations and attempts to evade detection.
- Cartoon caption of the day: "My dog ate my homework and then an immigrant ate my dog."
- Eagerly anticipating the second week of November 2024, when the US election is over!
(5) Miye Ota passed away peacefully shortly after her 106th birthday: Miye's son, Steve, who passed away in 2020, was my son's aikido sensei. This SB Independent article celebrated her 100th birthday.
(6) VP candidate J. D. Vance talks at a higher grade level than Donald Trump, but they are both made of the same stinking, racist, xenophobic cloth.
(7) Predictable exodus of academics from Florida: In a recent survey, nearly 2 out of 5 faculty members reported that since 2022, they have applied for an academic job outside Florida. Popular destinations include California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New York. Governor DeSantis may want to compare notes with Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei to learn about the impact of driving away academics.
2024/09/17 (Tuesday): Today, I offer reviews of three sociopolitical books about the US, Iran, and Israel.
(1) Book review: Cooper, William, How America Works ... And Why It Doesn't: A Brief Guide to the US Political System, Gemini Books, 2024. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
The material in this book is presented in two parts and 10 chapters. Part One, "How America Works," consists of the following 5 chapters: History; The Constitution; Constitutional Abominations; Constitutional Principles; Essential Traditions. The 5 chapters of Part Two, "And Why It Doesn't," are as follows: Tribalism, Social Media, and Political Structure; Political Dysfunction; Policy Failures; Threats; The Future.
America is defined not just by the US Constitution but by essential traditions which are not found in the Constitution but that are just as central to the American experiment. The two-party system is the worst of these traditions, because it contributes to tribalism, and the rule of law, which entails respect for courts and court orders, is the best. According to Mahatma Gandhi, who is quoted at the beginning of Chapter 5, "Independence means voluntary restraints and discipline, voluntary acceptance of the rule of law." Capitalism, and its attendant privacy rights, though mostly positive, must be viewed as a mixed bag.
So, why have the lofty words of the US Constitution and American traditions ceased working in the 21st century? Right at the outset of Part Two, Cooper points to three culprits: Tribalism, social media, and a malformed political structure. Humans survived on Earth because of tribalism, so cognitive bias is baked into us by evolution. The effect of tribalism is amplified by availability bias, the fact that our assessment of risk/danger is driven by available personal and collective memories, not representative data, and confirmation bias. And here is where social media comes in to fill our memories with whatever serves the tribe. Political dysfunction has created a breed of politicians that put tribal allegiance above intellectual coherence.
In the concluding Chapter 10, Cooper begins by quoting Carl Sagan, warning about the danger of America sliding back into superstition and darkness. He then asks the following fundamental question: "Is America's twenty-first-century decline merely another dip in a long arc of non-linear, yet essentially upward, progress? Or is it, rather, the first phase of a steep and irreversible decline?" Avoiding irreversible decline, Cooper suggests, requires better civic education for the American people and a heightened awareness of cognitive biases. Technology acts as a double-edged sword in that it can enable tribal tendencies and power grabs or democratize information and education.
Cooper includes two appendices: A complete reproduction of the Bill of Rights (10 amendments to the US Constitution) and statements on climate change from 18 scientific associations. Seven pages of endnotes (primarily URLs) and a sizable bibliography conclude this valuable book.
(2) Book review: Kamali, Marjan, The Lion Women of Tehran: A Novel, unabridged 10-hour audiobook, read by Mozhan Navabi and Nikki Massoud, Simon & Schuster Audio, 2024.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I can't think of any better setting for drama and heartbreak than the situation in Iran immediately before and just after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. And multiple authors have exploited this setting, many of them taking liberties with historical facts to enhance the drama. As someone who witnessed the Revolution firsthand, I find some of the inaccuracies bothersome, as I wrote in my review of Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel, Persepolis. To be fair, Satrapi's book was autobiographical (nonfiction), whereas Kamali's is a novel (historical fiction). Kamali has previously written The Stationary Shop (2019) and Together Tea (2013).
The cover blurb describes this book as "a heartfelt, epic new novel of friendship, betrayal, and redemption set against three transformative decades in Tehran, Iran." The three decades are the 1950s, when the protagonist Ellie lives a privileged life until the untimely death of her father forces the family to move into a tiny home downtown; the 1960s, when the super-lonely Ellie enjoys the friendship of Homa, as they grow up and attend school together; and the 1970s, when the girls' adult friendship as they pursue diverging sociopolitical goals collides with the revolutionary turmoil in their homeland.
The "lion women" of the title is English for "shir-zanaan," which is a Persian term for fearless women. One of the joint ambitions of Ellie and Homa is to become lion women as adults. Unfortunately, the girls' intense friendship is disrupted when Ellie's mother remarries and returns, with Ellie, to a lifestyle of grand comfort. As Ellie abides by her mother's plans which put her on a path to marriage, Homa follows in her father's footsteps and pursues political activism, with aspirations to become a lawyer who crusades for women's freedom. These conflicting paths are played out to dramatic effect against a background of regime change, political persecution, women's subjugation, and devastating loss.
As is common in books about Iran at the intersection of age-old traditions and political upheaval, there are ample references to Persian food, Iranian customs, families being torn apart by emigration, and adjusting to life in a new land. The story ends in 2022, some five decades after it began. Woven into the novel's conclusion is the story of Mahsa Amini, the young Iranian women who died in police custody after she was apprehended for not wearing her headscarf properly.
(3) Book review: Senor, Dan and Saul Singer, The Genius of Israel: The Surprising Resilience of a Divided Nation in a Turbulent World, unabridged 10-hour audiobook, read by the first author, Simon & Schuster Audio, 2023. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Though this book isn't a sequel to Start Up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle (2009 book by the same authors), it tells the same type of success story, this time focusing on Israel's social structure. The fact that Israelis are by and large a happy bunch that rank near the top of world happiness index, despite internal challenges and external threats, is just as surprising as a relatively young country of about 7 million people with no natural resources producing more start-up companies on a per capita basis than large, peaceful, and stable nations and regions like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada, and all of Europe. Whether the social miracle holds up in the wake of the October 2023 Hamas attack and the ensuing Gaza war, is something to be seen.
Israel ranks high on life expectancy and low on deaths from suicide and substance abuse. It is unique among the world's wealthy democracies in not facing aging and shrinking population. The optimism about the future that pervades the Israeli socitey is seemingly incompatible with being surrounded by hostile nations bent on destroying it. This optimism in turn prevents the levels of loneliness, teen depression, and social decline we witness in many Western democracies.
On the surface, the Israeli society is highly divided into four groups of citizens: Observant Jews, secular Jews, Orthodox Jews, and Arabs. These groups do not see eye to eye on many issues, but they are united in their love for Israel and when there is a need to defend their homeland. Trust in leadership is quite high: The same Israelis that protest against certain government policies follow official calls during a national emergency. One uniting influence is military service that tends to bridge the age and generation gaps. The sense that if they don't work together, they will perish together is a strong motivating factor.
The authors offer plenty of social success stories. I will focus on a few of them in the rest of this review. Healthcare and medical technology is a good example. During the COVID years, Israel led the world in procuring and stockpiling vaccine doses, based on an economic analysis that the cost of economic shut-down would be several times higher than the hefty premium paid for vaccines in the early days. Israeli doctors and hospitals are state of the art and their services are provided to everyone.
Another example is Israel's film/television industry. Despite the very small market for Hebrew films and shows, Israel has been producing hit films and series, often selling the rights to other countries that produce English versions. The hit TV series "Homeland," based on the Israeli series "Prisoners of War," is a good example. Another TV series that caught my eyes because of my involvement in helping families dealing with a loved one's mental illness portrays a psychologist who treats patients at his clinic five days a week and then seeks psychological treatment for himself. A similar US series would go a long way toward scaling up efforts to spread public knowledge about mental illness and confronting the stigma that comes with it.
Seven of the book's 13 chapters are about Israeli success stories of the kind discussed above, but Senor & Singer also include several chapters focusing on internal divisions in the country, including Jewish/Arab and religious/secular dichotomies. The political stalemate that led to the election of Bibi Netanyahu as the head of the coalition of conservative/nationalistic/religious parties is discussed only briefly. The authors seem to have a favorable view of Netanyahu's Judicial-reform policy.
Perhaps the authors paint an overly-rosy picture, but there are many lessons in Israel's economic and social successes. The success in social domains is built around the values of service, solidarity, and belonging. The ethos of service, instilled in Israelis by Israeli Defense Forces, deserves a good chunk of the credit. The social success story of Israel provides other countries with models of how to overcome the crises of disconnectedness and lack of purpose in modern life.
2024/09/16 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Center] Second anniversary of Mahsa's Revolution (see the next item below). [Right] Justice Stephen Breyer's Reading the Constitution (see the last item below).
(2) A somber day for Iran: September 16 is the second anniversary of Mahsa Zhina Amini's death while in police custody in Tehran. She had been arrested for not wearing her headscarf "properly" and had been roughed up in the van taking her to the police station. She collapsed from her injuries at the police station and later died at a hospital. Her death sparked a women-led movement under the slogan #WomanLifeFreedom that shook Iran's Islamist regime to the core, prompting it to quell the street protests with deadly force. Security guards killed hundreds and maimed, abducted, or arrested thousands of others. Iranians throughout the world will honor Mahsa and other casualties of the 2022 anti-Iranian-regime protests.
(3) On the margins of the Emmy Awards: Candice Bergen recounted at the Emmys the time her character Murphy Brown was attacked by the then-VP Dan Quayle for having a kid as a single mom. "Oh, how far we've come. Today a Republican candidate for VP would never attack a woman for having kids."
(4) It's quite simple: Someone who cheats his customers, vendors, & partners will cheat you. Someone who betrayed his wives will betray you. Someone who lies all the time, will lie to you.
(5) Book review: Breyer, Stephen, Reading the Constitution: Why I Chose Pragmatism, Not Textualism, unabridged 12-hour audiobook, read by the author, Simon & Schuster Audio, 2024.
[My 4-star review of this book GoodReads]
Recently-retired after serving 28 years on the US Supreme Court, Justice Stephen Breyer writes about his judicial philosophy and life on the highest court of the land. Breyer disagrees with the relatively new judicial philosophy known as textualism. Textualists believe that the proper way to interpret the Constitution and statues is through careful analysis of the text and paying attention to the language as it was understood at the time the documents were written. They dismiss the need to consider history, precedent, tradition, purposes, values, and consequences.
Breyer sides with Chief Justice John Marshall, who viewed the Constitution as a workable set of principles to be interpreted by subsequent generations. According to Breyer, the most-important element in interpreting laws is to understand the purposes of the statues as well as the consequences of deciding a case one way or another. “I will sometimes ask how a (hypothetical) ‘reasonable legislator’ would have interpreted the statute in light of its purposes.”
The writing and reading are somewhat dry, but the sample cases that Breyer uses to illustrate his points, including the Dobbs case which led to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, form important milestones in the SCOTUS history. He argues that departing from settled law can lead to chaos. He is cautiously optimistic that in time, the new justices will realize the limitations of textualism and come to understand that “the ultimate object of law is to allow human beings to live peacefully and prosperously together in communities.”
2024/09/14 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] The latest Dr. Seuss book (humor): They're Eating the Dogs, They're Eating the Cats. And here's a musical tribute to the new book. [Center] Elon Musk's estranged trans daughter knocks her dad for his misogynistic response to Taylor Swift's endorsement of Harris/Walz. [Right] Kapka Kassabova's Border (see the last item below).
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Boar's Head indefinitely shuts down its deli meat plant in Virginia tied to a deadly listeria outbreak.
- Americans used 100 exabytes of wireless data (that's 100 trillion megabytes) in 2023.
- NASA faces an unsustainable future, according to a new joint report by multiple US national academies.
- Unemployment in the information technology sector hits 6%, similar to the end of the dot-com bubble.
- Sarah Allen's Physics Fairy Tales has three volumes thus far: Newton's Laws, Fluid Mechanics, and Light.
- Welcome to millions of Taylor Swift fans whose leader has endorsed Kamala Harris!
(3) J. D. Vance: "I don't think most Americans are going to be influenced by a billionaire celebrity who is fundamentally disconnected from the interests and problems of most Americans." He was talking about Taylor Swift, but ironically, the statement also applies to Donald Trump.
(4) You gotta be kidding me: The ruling mullahs control Iran's borders in both directions, for those who want to enter the country and those wanting to leave. Quite a few Iranians are banned from leaving the country and many are not welcome in other countries. Now, President Pezeshkian has the nerves to suggest that Islamic nations should remove their borders, similar to what the EU has done.
(5) Development of mass digital storage technology: An article by Tom Coughlin and Roger Hoyt in IEEE Computer magazine's Sep. 2024 issue examines the path of several mass storage technologies until 2037. NAND Flash chips are expected to offer 2-4 TB capacity by 2027, using hundreds of circuit layers. Beyond that, the picture is unclear. Hard disk drives may reach 100 TB capacity, with recording density of more than 10 TB per square inch by 2037. The corresponding numbers for magnetic tape are 1500 TB and 0.6 TB/in^2.
(6) Book review: Kassabova, Kapka, Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe, Graywolf Press, 2017.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
In this travel narrative, Kassabova mixes her exploration of the border region between Bulgaria, Turkey, and Greece with narratives on the Cold War, Europe’s migration crisis, and regional geography. The border areas, which have been shaped over centuries by myths & legends, as well as by the ambitions of the Soviet and Ottoman Empires, were popular crossings into the West, because they were thought to be easier options that the Berlin Wall. In this historically-rich, conflict-strewn region, migrants from Syria and Iraq, after walking across Turkey, mingle with smugglers, treasure-hunters, and a host of other characters, all of them interacting with border guards.
Kassabova includes a number personal stories about people she encounters, such as a Pomak couple running a bustling guesthouse in a mountain village where "labyrinthine passages carved out cathedrals and entire cities inside the cliffs." The ethnic minorities in this region suffered during the communist era, as they were under constant suspicion. They learned to cope and prosper, eventually outliving their communist tormentors.
The "edge of Europe" is no longer exclusively in this area, as migration has spread throughout the continent. For the Brits, the edge is now the English Channel and for Italians it is the Mediterranean Sea, the path taken by boatloads of migrants who enter Europe, while taking immense risks by crowding into unseaworthy crafts.
2024/09/12 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] "Hypocrisy, Spinelessness, and the Triumph of Donald Trump": Article in The Atlantic: About time somebody raised these facts. [Center] Tonight's Talngor Group talk on democratic elections (see the last item below). [Right] The world's largest turtle that roamed South America 10 million years ago.
(2) Germany has had it with spies and terrorists living there under diplomatic or religious pretenses: It deports Khamanei’s representative at Hamburg Islamic Center.
(3) Tonight's Talangor Group talk: Yours truly spoke under the title "The Science and Engineering of Democratic Elections." Before the main talk, Ms. Parinoush Saniee made a short presentation entitled "Iranian Women Are the Heroes of the Age of Defeat." In transition to my main topic, I shared the good news that UCSB has chosen Ms. Marzieh Gahvarband as the inaugural awardee of the Mahsa Amini Graduate Fellowship, which will support her doctoral studies. There were ~75 attendees
We tend to think of voting as conceptually simple: Isn't it just casting ballots and counting them? This is true when there are only two candidates, in which case the only possible complication is tie votes. Normally, one candidate gets more votes than the other (although not necessarily a majority of votes due to blank and invalid ballots) and is declared the winner. As soon as we have three candidates, complications arise, which have been subjects of intense studies by mathematicians, computer scientists/engineers, and economists.
Mathematician/economist Kenneth Arrow won a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics by proving an impossibility theorem for voting: That if we require the satisfaction of four axioms, all of which are quite logical and reasonable, then there does not exist a voting system that satisfies all four of them. No matter how hard we try, and how much complexity we introduce into our voting system, there are instances where it fails to reflect the will of the people in a reasonable and fair way.
I showed several examples where our commonly-used plurality voting system yielded inappropriate outcomes and pointed to two important causes: Vote splitting and spoiler candidates. I also showed several alternative voting schemes (approval voting, Borda voting, and rank-order voting) that avoid some of the difficulty, although we know from Arrow's impossibility theorem that these alternate schemes must also fail in some cases. So, there is no perfect "error-free" voting system, but we can devise systems with fewer problematic cases.
I concluded my discussion by pointing to the difficult problem of districting and an abomination known as Gerrymandering. A spirited discussion ensued about elections in general and the way they are conducted in the US, including the notion of Electoral College versus popular vote. At the end of this report, I am including three references for further study of the mathematical details of voting systems and a couple of books on US politics that I have found enlightening.
Recording of Ms. Saniee's short presentation.
Recording of my talk on democratic elections. [My PDF slides]
UCSB ECE 594BB Web page.
- Borgers, Christof, Mathematics of Social Choice: Voting, Compensation, and Division. [Review]
- Brams, Steven J. and Peter C. Fishburn, Approval Voting. [Review]
- Poundstone, William, Gaming the Vote: Why Elections Aren't Fair (and What We Can Do About It). [Review]
- Cooper, William, How America Works, and Why It Doesn't: A Brief Guide to the US Political System. [Review]
- Lewis, Verlan, The Myth of Left and Right: How the Political Spectrum Misleads and Harms America. [Review]
2024/09/11 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Presidential debate body languages: Harris looked directly at Trump when she spoke or when he spewed his lies. Trump rarely looked at Harris, usually facing the moderators. he also screamed and looked angry throughout. [Center] Math puzzle: Find the radius r of the quarter-circle in terms of a and b. [Right] One assessment of last night's Harris-Trump presidential debate.
(2) A tribute to the 343 FDNY firefighters who perished at the World Trade Center, shared with love on this 23rd anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. [41-minute video]
(3) Bitterness vs. hope: In last night's presidential debate, Kamala Harris projected confidence and gave some specifics of her program, whereas Donald Trump repeated his old grievances and debunked conspiracy theories. Real-time fact-checking is tough. I hope that in the coming days, all of DJT's lies are exposed.
(4) The EU plans to launch the European digital identity (eID) by 2026, allowing citizens to use a single digital wallet app to manage finances, access services, sign contracts, and travel.
(5) Does anyone remember fax machines? I had to fax a document to an office in Canada, essentially to prove that I have left Canada so that my Canadian pension funds can be unlocked and released to a US bank. I had not faxed anything for years and when I went to use our departmental fax machine, I was told that it had been removed. A UPS store finally helped me send the fax. The office in Canada does have a Web site, but sending a PDF would have required me to set up an account. The registration process for the account asked for a lot of Canada-specific information, which I did not have. Hope I don’t need to fax anything again!
(6) Carbon footprint of food delivery services: Every time you drive to eat at a restaurant or order take-out, you emit some carbon into the atmosphere (unless you drive an EV). Using DoorDash or another delivery service has the same impact, because a DoorDash driver usually picks up one order and delivers it to one address. On-line grocery orders are somewhat better, because the store’s delivery truck may batch several orders along a route. Services like Hello Fresh have pluses and minuses. The pre-measured ingredients help reduce waste, which is good, but they do use a lot of packaging, which increase the carbon footprint. Be mindful of the environmental impact of your food delivery choices!
2024/09/09 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Center] The evolution of movie-theater marquees (see the last item below). [Right] The French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo publishes a special issue for the anniversary of Iran's Mahsa Revolution, declaring that Iranian women won't give up.
(2) A felon wants to be the US President & apparently half the country has no problem with it: Shouldn't we remove questions about felony convictions from job, rental, and other applications?
(3) Kate the Chemist: After garnering 287,000 TikTok followers, Kate Bibendorf is hired by Notre Dame as its inaugural Professor of the Public Understanding of Science. Instead of teaching classes, she will engage with social media. The idea had been previously tried by Oxford University. [Video]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Putin sides with Turkey & Azerbaijan in their plan to build a transportation route that bypasses Iran.
- Tajikistan wants none of the signs of extremist Islam: It has banned headscarves and beards.
- The Russian government's spending on research will be cut by 25% over the next two years.
- Tonight's veggie pizzas, made on two flatbreads and two packaged pizza crusts. [Tweet, with photo]
(5) Stealing money from the Iranian people: Much has been written about the rotten-to-the-core Islamic regime in Iran, including its corruption and brutal oppression of people. The latest scheme for making money at the expense of the people is for bank officials or those with connections to the banks to get low-interest multi-million-dollar loans. For each $1 million borrowed at 4%, the borrower can make 10% per year without any effort. The 6% margin amounts to $60,000. Lending money at 4% in a country with inflation consistently in the double-digits and often in excess of 25% is a crime.
(6) Musings of a curious engineer: As I walk the streets of Santa Barbara and Goleta, I observe unusual or unexpected things, which I share with you from time to time under the "Musings" heading. Today's topic is movie-theater marquees. Not long ago, marquees were glamorous and told you not just about the film being shown, but also the director, the stars, the music composer, and, at times, displayed images of the film and its stars. Of course, this was easier before the age of multiplex theaters, with up to a dozen screens in many cases. As space became limited, only brief movie titles were included. Then, they got rid of show times, which the patrons were supposed to get from newspapers or look up on-line. A movie theater on Goleta's Fairview Ave., near where I live, has now even gotten rid of film titles! In this age of inexpensive digital screens, it baffles me that theater marquees have not been replaced with digital screens. When tastefully done (as opposed to loud, Las Vegas style), digital marquees can add to the urban experience. At any rate, the bland, ugly marquees have got to go.
2024/09/08 (Sunday): Today, I offer reviews of 5 books; The short list for UCSB Reads 2025 program.
(1) Book review: Green, John, The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet, unabridged 11-hour audiobook, read by the author, Penguin Audio, 2021.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This book, by the author of The Fault in Our Stars, a 2012 young-adult novel and a 2014 movie about a teenage girl who was diagnosed with cancer and her relationship with a boy she met in a support group, consists of a collection of essays that are revised/expanded from Green's successful podcast. The book includes six all-new pieces.
The Anthropocene is a fairly recent term which refers to the planet Earth at its current geological age, a period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment. Whether or not we accept the view of some geologists that the Anthropocene actually began with the Industrial Revolution, we are now in it and it is incumbent upon us to do our best to understand it and try to deal with problems it brings about.
Green begins by asserting that we are in the age of reviews. We used to have book reviews and movie reviews, with their attendant star systems, but now we review and rate everything: Restaurants, hotels, travel destinations, streets, breakfast cereals, and even park benches. The book's essays, taking the form of reviews, are Green's way of sharing his thoughts about humanity's ingenuity and imperfections as Earth's caretakers. He also shares, directly for the first time, his own mental health challenges, including depression and panic attacks.
As we face our day-to-day challenges, technological marvels and certain quirky stuff that we own or like allow us to circumvent our angst and enjoy our time on Earth. Green hopes that we can discover meaning, joy, and love during our brief stay on this planet and that we can thread our way toward a world where defenseless creatures no longer face arbitrary extinction at our hands.
(2) Book review: Gay, Ross, The Book of Delights: Essays, unabridged 5-hour audiobook, read by the author, Recorded Books, 2019.
[My 3-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I liked the idea of this book but didn't care much for its contents. The idea is that the author decided to write each day about something delightful that happened to him, carrying on the activity from one birthday to the next. We tend to remember the awful things that happen to us from day to day, so focusing on life's delights can be life-changing.
The book consists of 102 chapters, averaging ~3 minutes each in the audio version. The author does state that he didn't write on Sundays but not why he has only 102 essays instead of the expected 312 (52 weeks times 6 days). I have listed below a dozen of the chapter titles to give my readers a sense of the contents.
Chapter 5. Hole in the head
Chapter 11. Transplanting
Chapter 21. Coffee without a saucer
Chapter 26. Airplane rituals
Chapter 30. Infinity
Chapter 37. To spread the sweetness of love
Chapter 44. Not only
Chapter 51. Annoyed no more
Chapter 63. The volunteer
Chapter 72. An abundance of public toilets
Chapter 92. Filling the frame
Chapter 99. Black bumblebees
(3) Book review: Blackhawk, Ned, The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of US History, Yale University Press, 2023.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
American history has been written with a focus on Europeans and their descendants, maintaining that the United States evolved from its British settlements. From this vantage point, the US has failed to honor its founding proclamation that all are created equal. Even the name "America" honors a European, Americus Vesputius (Vespucci), its supposed discoverer, who claimed to have found "a new world."
In most accounts, America is synonymous with exploration and discovery, conquest and settlement. "Native Americans remain absent or appear as hostile or passive objects awaiting discovery and domination." Recently, scholars have begun to create a different view of our past that accounts for the dynamics of the struggle framing America's indigenous past, with Native American history being an essential part.
This book is a fine example of the more inclusive narrative. It confronts the sad fact that Indigenous peoples, African-Americans, and other non-white citizens have not been beneficiaries of the self-evident truths of equality, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness we proclaim as inalienable rights. For example, Native peoples were not granted US citizenship until 1924. Some 40% or Indian children were forcibly separated from their families and taken to boarding schools by 1928. Scholars now recognize African-American slaves as central to the making of America, but the same courtesy has not been extended to Native Americans. The encounters of Native Americans, who collectively spoke hundreds of languages and lived in societies ranging from family bands to vast empires, with newcomers irrevocably disrupted their lives. For example, the population of North America halved, from ~8 million to ~4 million, between 1492 and 1776. This devastating impact calls into question celebratory portraits of America's founding. We need a more honest account of the role of Native Americans in shaping the American nation and its history. Integration of Native American history into American history is thus overdue. The notion of discovery must be replaced with encounter.
The book's 12 numbered chapters are divided into two parts entitled "Indians and Empire" and "Struggles for Sovereignty," each with 6 chapters, as follows.
Introduction: Toward a New American History
Chapter 1. American Genesis: Indians and the Spanish Borderlands
Chapter 2. The Native Northeast and the Rise of British North America
Chapter 3. The Unpredictability of Violence: Iroquoia and New France to 1701
Chapter 4. The Native Inland Sea: The Struggle for the Heart of the Continent, 1701-1755
Chapter 5. Settler Uprising: The Indigenous Origins of the American Revolution
Chapter 6. Colonialism's Constitution: The Origins of Federal Indian Policy
Chapter 7. The Deluge of Settler Colonialism: Democracy and Dispossession in the Early Republic
Chapter 8. Foreign Policy Formations: California, the Pacific, and the Borderlands Origins of the Monroe Doctrine
Chapter 9. Collapse and Total War: The Indigenous West and the US Civil War
Chapter 10: Taking Children and Treaty Lands: Laws and Federal Power During the Reservation Era
Chapter 11. Indigenous Twilight and the Dawn of the Century: Native Activists and the Myth of Indian Disappearance
Chapter 12. From Termination and Self-Determination: Native American Sovereignty in the Cold War Era
(4) Book review: Ramakrishnan, Venki, Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality, unabridged 10-hour audiobook, read by John Moraitis, Harper Audio, 2024.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Aging, death, and their opposites, immortality, have been discussed in many books, by physicians, physicists, sociologists, novelists, and even techies, who aspire to find the secrets of living for 200+ years or, perhaps, forever. In this book, Nobel Laureate molecular biologist Venki Ramakrishnan (Chemistry Laureate, 2009), author of The Gene Machine, offers his take on new scientific discoveries about aging, why we die, and the human race's quest for immortality.
Driven in part by the afterlife of Judeo-Christian thought and the idea of reincarnation central to many Eastern religions, we tend to dismiss the finality of death. As children, we are scared by the thought of our loved ones dying someday, but think less about it as we age, until our final years. A fundamental question is whether we have to be mortal. Can we extend our lives, perhaps indefinitely, by altering or augmenting our natural biology? Alongside these physical questions, we also have to deal with philosophical and moral questions regarding life extension.
We have been immensely successful in extending the average life expectancy, doubling it in the US from ~40 years to ~80 years over the past two centuries. But the maximum human life has stayed pretty much constant, hovering around 120 years. We know that all living things can die, but many, including tiny hydras and some jellyfish, can regenerate completely when certain parts are chopped off. Their likelihood of dying does not increase with age, so they are essentially immortal, from a biological standpoint. Among more-familiar animals, we can learn a great deal from giant tortoises and some sharks, which age extremely slowly.
Ramakrishnan offers a modestly-optimistic conclusion that super-long lifespans will happen, but not in the near future. He dismisses the heavily-promoted (to elderly billionaires) prospects of storing human bodies by cryonics methods until we have found a cure for whatever killed them. He has a more positive view of moderate life extension, demonstrated in animals, through calorie restriction and certain medicines such as rapamycin, resveratrol, metformin, and curcumin.
This is the kind of life extension assessment one would expect from a distinguished scientist with his feet firmly on the ground, as opposed to from techies and start-up founders who have to hype their methods in order to get the next round of funding.
(5) Book review: Zevin, Gabrielle, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, unabridged 14-hour audiobook, read by Jennifer Kim and Julian Cihi, Random House Audio, 2022.
[My 3-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Let me open my review by confessing that I did not listen to the entire audiobook, because I was not drawn by the story or the writing. A video-game designer or an avid gamer may view the novel more charitably.
Game-design enthusiasts Sam Masur and Sadie Green, who grew up together as children, meet again in Cambridge, Massachusetts, while attending Harvard and MIT, respectively, and are drawn to designing a video-game together. The game brings them fame and fortune. Sam and Sadie love each other, but they never become lovers. The tale goes on for three decades, during which the protagonists pursue their passions & ambitions and deal with life challenges, culminating in Venice Beach, California. Along the way, video games mirror life for them, except that there is no end to life in games: "It's tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. It's the possibility of infinite rebirth, infinite redemption. The idea that if you keep playing, you could win." The novel also gives the reader a crash course on the history of video games during their heydays.
2024/09/07 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Sixth National Informatics Conference, Tehran, Iran: February 26-27, 2025. [Center] Math puzzle: Find the area of the square. [Right] Anniversary of Mahsa Amini's Revolution observed in Los Angeles: Sun., Sep. 15, 2024, 1:00-4:00 PM, Westwood Blvd. & Rochester Ave. #WomanLifeFreedom
(2) School shootings are a "fact of life," according to J. D. Vance. No, they're not! They become a fact of life when you choose the gun lobby over our children.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- UN personnel investigating ISIS's mass graves for the Yazidis have been ordered to leave Iraq.
- EU, US, UK, Israel, and several other countries sign an international AI treaty.
- Iran's future: This young boy lectures in Persian on benefits of technology in general & AI in particular.
- Iranian young boy speaks in English, addressomg the 13th International Congress of Civil Engineering.
(4) Seeing is believing: This old saying must be updated for the age of AI and virtual reality. With AI & VR, you can see realistic-looking things that are made up. Pay attention, look for inconsistencies, search for the same info from a trusted source. Even before AI & VR, eyewitness testimony had come to be distrusted, because it is impacted by environmental factors, biases, and false memories. Many individuals who were initially convicted based on eyewitness testimony were sub sequently cleared by DNA evidence.
(5) Amazon at 30: All three of my children are 30+ years old, which means that Amazon did not exist when they were born or was struggling to come into existence, with the vision of becoming "The Everything Company." Each of Amazon's 175 "fulfilment centers" today is larger than the largest mega-store that you can imagine. Innovative technologies allow customer orders to be prepared and shipped in a matter of hours. The question is: What else is there for "The Everything Company" to conquer? Plenty, it seems! Just the data held by Amazon can be an invaluable source of income.
(6) Musings of a curious engineer: When are we going to phase out the US penny? It is well-known that making a 1-cent coin costs more than one penny. Merchants and their cash-paying customers are no fans of the coin. Nearly all pennies ever made sit in jars at homes and workplaces. Canada stopped minting pennies in 2012, but the existing coins continue to be accepted. Other countries have successfully ditched coins (and in some cases, bills) with tiny denominations. It's time that we ditch the penny. And while we are at it, let's be forward-looking and also get rid of the nickel.
2024/09/06 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] A talk about the diffusion of print technology in the Muslim world (see the next item below). [Center] A fine specimen of Persian calligraphic art. [Right] Talangor Group talk on the Mahsa revolution (see the last item below).
(2) Yesterday's talk on the history of print technology in the Muslim world: Dr. Nile Green (UCLA) spoke under the title "Persian Printing in Comparative Context: The Place of Iran in Three Technological Diffusion Zones." Dr. Green is a historian who specializes in Islamic history of Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe, including that of the wider Persianate world.
Print technology was not taken up by the Muslim world until the early 19th century. Then, it moved swiftly through three regional diffusion zones.
- The Mediterranean Zone: The Ottoman's printed some books for Muslim readers in the 1700s, but it was in the 1820 Egypt that the first sustained Muslim-controlled press took hold, with its first book being an Italian-Arabic dictionary.
- The Eurasian Zone: Typography and lithography were exported to borderlands and from there to neighboring Muslim regions. St. Petersburg was a major center of print technology and, later, Tiblisi hosted many Persian publishers.
- The Indian Ocean Zone: Print technology was introduced by East India Company and missionaries. Muslim-issued typed books began appearing in Calcutta in the late 1810s. Later, maps were printed using lithographic technology.
In all three zones, typography-based printing spread first, which was followed by lithography. By 1820, lithography had spread throughout Europe, to London, Naples, Oslo, and St. Petersburg. Initially, lithography was developed to make printing of music scores and maps possible, but later, its use expanded to all printing projects with low to moderate volume.
Because of the high cost of typographic equipment and the need for imported replacement parts and technical know-how, lithography quickly dominated in the Islamic world, except in the Mediterranean Zone, were ready access to nearby technology and talent made it feasible to continue with the more demanding typographic system.
Printing arrived in Iran through the Eurasian Zone, first taking hold in Tabriz in 1817 and later spreading to Tehran and Shiraz during the 1820s. Crown Prince Abbas Mirza sent court artist Allahverdi to study lithography in Tiblisi. The first lithographic Quran was published in Tehran in 1832.
My comment: One of the success stories in adopting print technologies is how Persian and Arabic calligraphers fine-tuned the script for typographic technology, leading to highly legible and, at times, beautiful typeset text. Yet, this wasn't enough to overcome the advantages of lithography. The same process repeated when we moved to computerized printing. First, we worked hard to adapt various printer technologies to the needs of the Persian/Arabic script, an exercise that became redundant when printing essentially became the transfer of bit-maps from the screen to paper.
(3) Last night's Talangor Group talk: Dr. Ata Hoodashtian spoke under the title "Major Challenges and Results of the Mahsa Revolution." There were ~90 attendees.
In a country like the Islamic Iran, political and economic powers are under tight control of conservative clerics, so it is hard to imagine the regime's overthrow through civil disobedience and peaceful street protests. Despite the fact that the Mahsa Revolution has fizzled out after a year of intense activity and people are more cautious about marching on the streets after numerous deaths and injuries inflicted by the regime, the have been three important developments in Iran's civil society.
- Changes in the family sphere
- Advances in education
- Openings in religious dialog
Many opposition groups have come to the conclusion that street protests did not work, so pursuing a set of new approaches is called for. One example is forming coalitions between opposition groups inside and outside the country, and even with dissatisfied members of the regime's inner circles. In such a pursuit, three important questions must be answered.
Q1: What are we to do with protesters who perished, lost limbs, were blinded, or suffered PTSD from brutal attacks by security forces? Should we offer a form of group therapy to heal their wounds or those of their loved ones? They are understandably disappointed. How can we give them encouragement and inner peace? However, when we extract fighters from the streets, will we not surrender the front?
Q2: How can we return the people to the streets? The answer is that we can't. They must return on their own initiative. but we have to be ready to help out if we can when the return to the streets does happen. National leadership is needed to move ahead. Field or local leadership will help but isn't enough to bring about major changes. Economic crises are likely to lead to a new round of self-activated street protests.
Q3: Exactly what we are fighting for? For democracy? Is democracy even possible in Iran? Democratic systems are messy and in constant state of change. Leaders come and go. Laws are annulled or revised. Isn't a stable regime preferable? The latter was tried by Stalin with devastating results. The Mahsa Revolution made us ask important question. We learned that saying no to the current regime isn't enough. We have to define what we want. Human rights are now integral parts of the discussion, whereas even in the 1979 revolution, human rights did not have a central role. Similarly, demands for democracy is now part of the societal dialog.
We have to base a future democracy on three fundamental rights:
- Right to life
- Right to freedom
- Right to ownership
During the Q&A session, I asked whether Iranians can truly unite around democracy, given that the term is ill-defined. There are many forms of democratic systems in the world, including republics, monarchies, and a vast variety of parliamentary systems. If we try to specify one of these in advance, unity may be lost. If we don't specify the democratic form of government, then exactly what are we uniting over? I think unity should be formed around a small number of human rights (as listed above), which are agreeable to everyone, leaving the specification of the form of a democratic government to an elected body, which may also write a new constitution.
2024/09/04 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Sharif University of Technology Association (SUTA) held its 2024 reunion in Niagara Falls, Canada, a few days ago. The photo shows some of the participants at the last day's picnic. [Center] Cartoon of the day: Republican priorities for our kids. [Right] Killings, imprisonments, and abduction of Iranian citizens continue by the Islamic regime (see the last item below).
(2) Mass shooting at at a Georgia high school near Atlanta leaves 4 dead and at least 9 injured. Watch Republicans and NRA officials hide over the next few days, until the incident is forgotten!
(3) The inaugural awardee of UCSB's graduate fellowship established in honor of Mahsa Amini is Marzieh Gahvardband, who studied law at Zanjan University and earned an MA in Women's Studies from the University of Alabama. The fellowship will support her pursuit of a doctorate in Religious Studies at UCSB.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Amazon's self-driving taxis lack steering wheels: They get help from humans sitting 100s of miles away.
- Violence against women: Ugandan Olympics runner dies when her ex-boyfriend sets her on fire.
- The world burns 12% of its plastic waste: So, we have air pollution on top of ocean & land pollution.
- Goleta's version of the week-long heat wave: uncomfortable, but not surpassing 100, like some LA areas.
- X University, formerly known as Stanford (satire): Elon Musk acquires Stanford fpr $139 billion.
(5) Indian street food: I am obsessed with mass-produced street food, much of it under unsanitary conditions. This guy, who sells deep-fried cauliflower, covered in a secret mix of spices, is cleaner than most.
(6) Stable genius continues on the path of mental decline.
Question: What specific legislation will you commit to make child care affordable?
Trump: Well, I would do that and we're sitting down, you know, I was, somebody, we had Marco Rubio and my daughter, Ivanka ... But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I'm talking about that because the child care is, child care couldn't, you know, there's something you have to have it in this country, you have to have it ... I want to stay with child care ... So we'll take care of it. Thank you.
(7) Final thought for the day: I am officially overwhelmed. I keep reading about imprisonments, deaths under torture, extrajudicial killings, abductions, and many other ways Iran's citizens are being harassed, oppressed, and slaughtered by the brutal Islamic regime. There is no way I can share all such news stories, as they would overwhelm my readers. Besides, I don't have the resources to verify each posting to ensure authenticity. Here are a few examples. As the Persian saying goes: "You may know by a handful the whole sack."
2024/09/03 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] In this review article, Andrew Lea explains the different approaches to programming chess computers. Along the way, he explores the many historical attempts at creating a chess-playing machine and asks philosophical questions about the nature of artificial intelligence. [Center] Labor Day outing with all three kids at a Chinese restaurant. [Right] Major academic donation (see the next item below).
(2) Academic philanthropy: Dr. Nayereh Tohidi, Professor of Gender & Women's Studies, and Dr. Kazem Alamdari, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, both from California State University, Northridge, have pledged $1.5 million to support the recently established endowment of Iran Academia University.
Founded in 2012, the Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities (ISSH), aka Iran Academia, is an alternative university that aims to provide knowledge in social sciences and humanities to Iran's youth in order to overcome restrictions on access and censorship of content.
(3) PM Netanyahu, dismissing calls for Israel to make concessions to free the hostages: "These murderers executed six hostages, and we're asked to make concessions? What message does this send Hamas? It says, murder more hostages and you will get more concessions."
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- San Bernardino, California, leads in launching a hybrid hydrogen-electric zero-emission commuter train.
- Disintegration of US bridges accelerated by extreme heat & increased flooding due to climate change.
- School cop who admitted to sexually abusing at least two children gets 3 years of probation in a plea deal!
- US swing voters (18%) tend to lean more conservative than liberal. [NYT charts]
- Unlawful arrests and harassment of Iran's Baha'i minority continues.
- Kaveh Akbar's conversation about his hugely successful novel Martyr. [My review]
- Math puzzle: Divide 987654321 by 123456789. Explain the rather surprising result.
- Gina Raimondo, a pro-business Democrat, leads the US Commerce Department quietly and ably.
- Did you know that there were two Nazi concentration camps on British soil? [13-minute video]
- Dan Bricklin, creator of the VisiCalc spreadsheet app, shares his experiences in this 12-minute TEDx talk.
(5) California's Rancho Palos Verdes is slipping: For a long time, the underground landslides were so glacial—about an inch a year—it was accepted simply as a quirk of the region. Now, for some residents, it has become catastrophic. Across a span of one square mile, the pace has quickened to nearly four feet a month.
(6) Final thought for the day: Former GOP strategist Stuart Stevens predicts that Trump is facing a serious math problem, leading to his crash just before Election Day. "[In 2020,] Trump lost by 7 million votes. He needs new customers." And he's doing nothing to attract them.
2024/09/02 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Happy US Labor Day! You can't be pro-labor if you don't value hard work or are against labor unions, no matter how many times you hug the flag. "Of life's two chief prizes, beauty and truth, I found the first in a loving heart and the second in a laborer's hand." ~ Khalil Gibran [Center] I am aware of Kamala Harris's shortcomings and do not exaggerate her qualifications, but right now I view her as the savior of what's left of our democratic system. No policy differences matter when the essence of America is threatened. [Right] A quarter of all International Olympiad of Informatics medalists enroll in five world universities.
(2) In a sense, the 2024 US presidential election is about what kind of masculinity we prefer: The kind on display in Kamala Harris's husband and her running mate or the kind exhibited by Trump and his running mate?
(3) Behrouz Vossoughi honored by Reza Pahlavi on the 55th anniversary of his hugely successful film "Qeysar": The trouble is that "Qeysar" normalized misogyny and glorified honor killings. According to this FB post, Islamists had a hand in the film's storyline and dialog.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Masked Palestinians try to free Palestine by destroying the lawn at McGill University!
- A high-level Islamic official & his son have made billions from illicit trading of Iranian & Russian oil.
- This isn't a S. American drug cartel: It's the Iranian police forcing a detainee in the trunk of their car.
- Venture capitalist to childless women: Your pursuit of equity & social justice has made you "miserable."
- PBS "Firing Line" special on the challenges of accurate vote-counting, particularly in the face of distrust.
- The design and workings of London's Elizabeth Tower, aka The Big Ben. [10-minute video]
(5) The big quake may be imminent: The world's greatest earthquakes, shaking both seabed & land and generating tsunamis 100+ feet high, tend to occur where one tectonic plate slips under another one. Such a fault off Japan caused the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. The US-Canada West Coast is home to such a fault, known as Cascadia. Similar zones exist off Alaska, Chile, and New Zealand, among other places. At Cascadia, big quakes are believed to come roughly every 500 years, give or take a couple hundred. The last occurred in 1700.
(6) Extreme hypocrisy: The Iranian government, which has banned and blocked Telegram for 6 years, criticizes the French government for not honoring free speech and detaining Telegram's founder!
(7) In addition to a record number of executions in Islamic Iran, deaths of detainees under torture are on the rise: Authorities admit that a young man from Lahijan was killed because his interrogators "could not control their rage"!
2024/09/01 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Iran's Islamic government and its people have different priorities & world views! [Center] Cartoon of the day: Trump at Arlington National Cemetery. [Right] Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI (see the last item below).
(2) Gen-Z-ers can't type: US Department of Education reports that from 2000 to 2019, the fraction of high-schoolers who had taken a keyboarding course dropped from 44% to 2.5%. This is in part due to fewer devices having physical keyboards.
(3) "And it's like, friends of mine that are like English professors, they say it's the most brilliant thing ... But the fake news, they say, he rambled." ~ Donald Trump defending his rambling speeches
(4) Biocomputers are now available for rent: One such computer from the Swiss tech firm FinalSpark can be accessed for a monthly fee of $500. A low-energy alternative to AI models, these biocomputers, or organoids, are comprised of human brain cells and last only about 100 days. Among the nine universities granted access to FinalSpark's biocomputers are the University of Michigan, Free University of Berlin, and Lancaster University.
(5) Book review: Kurzweil, Ray, The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI, unabridged 10-hour audiobook, read by Adam Barr, Penguin Audio, 2024. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This book is a sequel coming nearly two decades after Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (2005; my 4-star review). This sequel is much shorter and less compelling than the original, but it comes at a time when alarm bells are ringing louder in the wake of ChatGPT and neural implants. In the 2005 book, Kurzweil predicted that AI will surpass human-level intelligence and that human life will decouple from biology in ~25 years. His new time frame is mid-2040s. If Kurzweil's prediction is accurate, the next sequel will be titled The Singularity Is Here!
In this sequel, Kurzweil reexamines the exponential growth of technology and discusses its impact on almost every facet of human life, from reduction in poverty, crime, and war casualties to improvements in health, nutrition, education, intelligence, and political empowerment. We will soon be able to rebuild the world, atom by atom, with devices like nanobots, extend life radically beyond the current age limit of ~120, and vastly expand our intelligence by connecting our brains to the cloud, thus freeing our mental power from the space limitation of the human skull.
Kurzweil also devotes much commentary to the potential perils of biotechnology, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence, including their adverse effects on employment and safety (e.g., of autonomous cars), and on the societal discomfort with the notion of virtually reviving deceased individuals through a combination of their data and DNA.
The employment downside is illusory, but there is an interesting psychological effect at work here. In the past, technology has benefited the society as a whole, even when a few specific members were hurt. However, those who were saved, for example, by not dying of a specific eradicated disease, are faceless (we cannot name them), those who lost their jobs because they worked on treating patients having that disease are known and their suffering is on full display.
I end my review by listing the titles of the books 8 chapters that follow an unnumbered introductory chapter.
Chapter 1: Where Are We in the Six Stages?
Chapter 2: Reinventing Intelligence
Chapter 3: Who Am I?
Chapter 4: Life Is Getting Exponentially Better
Chapter 5: The Future of Jobs—Good or Bad?
Chapter 6: The Next Thirty Years in Health and Well-Being
Chapter 7: Peril
Chapter 8: Dialogue with Cassandra
At the time of this retelling of the story of Singularity, we are facing even more-challenging doubts and questions. For example, when we say that we will outlaw warrior robots making life-and-death decisions, unless a human-being is involved in the loop, will we be satisfied with a human being whose mental faculties have been augmented with AI? Then, if the augmented part of the decision-maker's brain is orders of magnitude more intelligent than his/her original brain, isn't this an AI making the decision?
2024/08/31 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Two different kinds of beauty in one frame! [Top center] This nice-looking identity is easy to prove. [Top right] Jeremy Rifkin's The Third Industrial Revolution (see the last item below). [Bottom left] Sir Thomas Herbert (1606-1682), who traveled to Iran during the reign of Shah Abbas I, created this drawing of Persepolis ~300 years before any archaeological work began in Iran. [Bottom center] I finally organized my wall clock alphabetically! [Bottom right] The two unwritten rules of life.
(2) Nahid Taghavi, an Iranian-German hostage, turns 70 in prison: Like other hostages taken by Iran's Islamic regime, she may one day be exchanged with IRI terrorists held in other countries.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- California State Assembly passes AI safety bill, despite opposition from tech companies.
- How the Persian polymath Abu Reyhan al-Biruni computed the Earth's radius to 1% accuracy.
- Djibouti: The tiny African country with military bases from all of the world's major powers.
- For Persian-speakers: In the second half of life, we should learn from our kids, not the other way around.
(4) Book review: Rifkin, Jeremy, The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World, St. Martin's Press, 2011.
[Image: .jpg; sqr]
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/61557581] Read 2024/07/16-18
This book inspired me to look into energy storage technologies and to prepare a presentation for general audiences on the idea of a worldwide Intergrid of energy (an analog of the Internet, with energy taking the place of information). I have already given the talk to two groups and have been scheduled for two more presentations.
The Agricultural Revolution was followed by the (First) Industrial Revolution of ~1760, which led the human economy towards more widespread, efficient, and stable manufacturing processes, by replacing manual production methods with machines and mechanized factory systems. As a result, the textile industry, the first to use modern production methods, became the dominant industry in terms of employment, value of output, and capital invested.
Beginning in the late 19th century, powered by oil and other fossil fuels, the Second Industrial Revolution, aka the Technological Revolution, created a phase of rapid scientific discovery, standardization, mass production and industrialization. The Second Industrial Revolution is coming to its end, as oil prices, and, as a result, other prices, skyrocket.
Like all other numbered or ranked ideas or events, there is disagreement about the next item on the list. Some consider the emergence of the Internet and the explosive growth of worldwide communication as constituting the next phase. Rifkin views widespread use of renewable energy and its global sharing, much like the sharing of data enabled by the Internet, as constituting the Third Industrial Revolution. Imagine an "energy Internet" that allows green energy to be produced in a distributed fashion and shared over a network by hundreds of millions of people in their homes, offices, and factories, just as information is being produced and shared today.
This new economic paradigm, that is, a fundamental reordering of human relationships from hierarchical to lateral power, has already been embraced by the European Union and other nations worldwide. It will create countless businesses and new jobs, and it will impact the way we conduct commerce, govern society, educate our children, and engage in civic life.
According to Rifkin, the five pillars of the Third Industrial Revolution are:
- Shifting to renewable energy
- Turning world's buildings into micro power-plants that collect renewable energies
- Deploying hydrogen and other storage technologies to store intermittent energies
- Using Internet technology to combine power grids into an energy-sharing intergrid
- Using electric plug-in cars and fuel-cell-powered transport, linked to the intergrid
At the beginning of Chapter 5, Rifkin brings to our attention a major shift among young people, that is, the disappearance of ideological beliefs. "Young people aren't much interested in debating the fine points of capitalist or socialist ideology or the nuances of geopolitical theory. … Their politics are less about right versus left and more about centralized and authoritarian versus distributed and collaborative. This makes sense. The two generations whose sociability has been formed, in large part, by Internet communications are far more likely to divide the world into people and institutions that use top-down, enclosed, and proprietary thinking, and those that use lateral, transparent, and open thinking."
In other words, it's time that we retire Adam Smith, who enthusiastically borrowed metaphors from Newton to fashion classical economic theory. Economic activity is less similar to Newton's laws of motion than to laws of thermodynamics. Paying attention to the law of conservation of energy and entropy, which says fossil fuels once consumed cannot be reused, we have no choice but to turn to the nearly-infinite energy from the Sun and other renewable sources. It is thus alarming that very few economists have studies thermodynamics, so central to understanding energy and thus the modern world.
Here's how Rifkin ends this fascinating book: "A transformation of this scale will require a concomitant leap to biosphere consciousness. Only when we begin to think as an extended global family, that not only includes our own species but all of our fellow travelers in evolutionary sojourn on Earth, will we be able to save our common biosphere community and renew the planet for future generations."
2024/08/30 (Friday): Today, I report on three presentations from Wednesday and Thursday.
(1) An interesting talk on Iranian cinema: Psychiatrist & author Dr. Mohammad-Reza Sargolzaee spoke under the title "Midlife Crisis and the Mother Complex in Iranian Cinema." There were ~45 attendees
Dr. Sargolzaee presented examples of how individuals grappling with a mother complex, particularly during midlife, are depicted in Iranian films, focusing on three specific examples:
- "Sex and Philosophy" ("Sex va Falsafeh," 2005 drama by Mohsen Makhmalbaf)
- "Hamoon" (1989 psychological drama by Dariush Mehrjui)
- "The Crow" ("Kalagh," 1977 mystery by Bahram Beyzai).
Unfortunately, audio quality was quite poor throughout the presentation and there were video & audio problems as the speaker attempted to share clips from the three films.
(2) wednesday's Socrates Think Tank talk: Dr. Farideh Kioumehr-Dadsetan spoke on the "79th Anniversary of Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima & Nagasaki: History and Current Situation of Nuclear Weapons." There were ~115 attendees.
After a brief review of the history of atomic weapons, Dr. Kioumehr recounted the horrors of atomic bomb detonations in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There are currently 9 nuclear nations and even though we haven't had any use of atomic bombs since World War II, there is always a chance that a crazy leader or an inadvertent mistake will lead to a disaster. A full-blown atomic conflict between the US and Russia may wipe out half of the world's population, according to some estimates.
Dr. Kioumehr enumerated some of the worldwide efforts to curtail nuclear proliferation. we have no choice but to keep up hope that logic will prevail and none of the world's nuclear powers uses its atomic bombs. modern bombs are a lot more powerful than the ones detonated in Japan and the damage they can do is significantly more devastating.
I pointed out in the Q&A period that we should not put atomic bombs and atomic energy in the same basket. Bombs are created to kill, whereas atomic energy was created to help with our expanding appetite for energy. While nuclear waste is a problem, there is a chance that engineering advances will mitigate the dangers. I also pointed to the fact that whereas there are only 9 nuclear nations, this count relates to conventional nuclear weapons created from highly-enriched material. Dirty bombs can be built by almost anyone using modern nuclear reactor fuel. These bombs do not do as much damage as conventional nukes, but in the hands of terrorists, who can deploy hundreds or even thousands of them, the danger is alarming.
(3) Thursday's Talangor Group talk: Dr. Abdi Modarressi talked under the title "Social Justice: A Look at the Views of John Rawls." There were ~95 attendees.
According to Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, John Rawls [1921-2002] was an American political philosopher in the liberal tradition. His theory of justice as fairness describes a society of free citizens holding equal basic rights and cooperating within an egalitarian economic system. His theory of political liberalism explores the legitimate use of political power in a democracy, and envisions how civic unity might endure despite the diversity of worldviews that free institutions allow. His writings on the law of peoples set out a liberal foreign policy that aims to create a permanently peaceful and tolerant international order. He is best known for his influential book A Theory of Justice (1971; revised 1999).
In his philosophy, Rawls was influenced by the destruction brought about by World War II and the Vietnam War. His views on justice were shaped by the fact that wars were fought by the lower class, whereas the upper class dodged the draft.
Justice and freedom are age-old pursuits, beginning with ancient philosophers. The Enlightenment brought these notions to the forefront, creating the expectation that humans are on a continuous course to goodness. The two political philosophies of liberalism and socialism were born as a result, although both led to disastrous results, one sacrificing freedom for justice and the other prioritizing justice over freedom.
Rawls' views have faced serious criticisms. One criticism is that he did not take the effect of culture into account. The social view of justice and fairness might be quite different in India versus Japan. The strongest argument against Rawls's theory of justice is that it's entirely abstract; it doesn't say anything to people in their ordinary, everyday situations. The kind of individual who would choose the kind of social arrangement that Rawls recommends from behind a self-imposed veil of justice simply doesn't exist.
2024/08/29 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] This mural celebrating Iranian math prodigies, Abu-Rayhan al-Biruni and Maryam Mirzakhani, is in Istanbul International Airport. [Center] Iranian female athletes defect to the West in record numbers: Some are getting lucrative deals. [Right] Tuesday night's Persian-style vegetable soup, made from Sadaf veggie soup mix and TJ's chicken broth, served with barbari bread. Your place was empty.
(2) Barcodes are on their way out: Brands and retailers could replace barcodes with QR codes as early as 2027. Successful transition requires software changes across industries worldwide. Additionally, customers used to scanning barcodes at self-checkout kiosks would have to be educated on how to interact with QR codes. The goal is to use a single QR code for point-of-sale and inventory scans, as well as customer engagement.
(3) My YouTube channel: I have had my YouTube channel since 2011, but only used it in a limited way to post lecture videos for my courses, providing links to enrolled students. I have begun to organize and expand the channel for public access. In addition to course lectures already posted, I will include various other presentations, tech news items, "Musings of a Curious Engineer," and "Math + Fun!"
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- UCLA receives $120M from Alya & Gary Michelson for new Institute for Immunology & Immunotherapy.
- Chinese government hackers have gained access to US Internet providers to spy on millions of users.
- Imams in NYC mosques praise Hamas, bash "Zionist Hollywood," and call for the destruction of Israel.
- FabBrick: A French company that recycles textiles into colorful bricks for construction and decorative uses.
- Persian cuisine: Traditional chelow-kabob restaurant in Khoy, Iran.
- Mass production of Indian food: Looks yummy, but prepared under questionable sanitary conditions.
(5) Malware developer's identity leaked through another malware: According to Check Point security researchers, the suspected developer of the new Styx Stealer malware exposed his identity along with valuable intelligence about other cybercriminals. The information leak occurred when the Styx Stealer developer used a Telegram bot token provided by a customer involved in the Agent Tesla malware campaign to debug the stealer on his own computer. The leaked information included his Telegram accounts, emails, and contacts.
2024/08/28 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] An open knight's tour of an 81 x 81 chessboard: The single-line drawing looks like a 9 x 9 Latin square of 9 different motifs. Each motif is an open knight's tour of a 9 x 9 chessboard. [Center] My prized set of Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming, Vols. 1-3: I've had Vols. 1 & 3 since my graduate-student days and acquired a newer edition of Vol. 2 a few years later. This latter volume has been a great source of ideas & inspiration. [Right] Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis (see the last item below).
(2) Iranian hackers targeted administration officials using WhatsApp: Meta has revealed that Iranian government hackers accused of breaching the Trump campaign with deceptive emails also used WhatsApp accounts to try to trick former Biden and Trump administration officials. The effort was discovered after users reported suspicious messages in which the hackers posed as customer support representatives from Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and AOL. Meta has suspended fewer than a dozen accounts that had targeted fewer than two dozen people in the United States, Israel, Iran, and elsewhere.
(3) Book review: Satrapi, Marjane, The Complete Persepolis (Persepolis #1-4), Pantheon, 2007.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I read the pieces of this compilation at various times and wrote about them on social media as I read them. This review, being put together in mid-August 2024 contains a summary of my views on the book series.
Satrapi's Persepolis was my first experience with a graphic novel. Despite its limitations, the graphic-novel format does allow a simple-to-follow narrative through a combination of words and images, but it also creates a tendency to exaggerate or distort in order to make the graphic part compelling. Deep reflections do not produce compelling graphics.
These autobiographical books, which have been made into a feature film, trace Satrapi's life from her childhood and coming-of-age within a large and loving family in Tehran during Iran's Islamic Revolution in the late 1970s, all the way to her self-imposed exile in Europe. Along the way, she is sent to Vienna while living at a boarding house and experiences a bittersweet homecoming. Satrapi's leftist family is quite disappointed when it turns out that the revolutionary government replacing the overthrown Shah isn't into honoring personal freedoms and human rights.
Satrapi is among the growing collection of Iranian authors who have used the dramatic sociopolitical developments in the 1970s and 1980s Iran as backdrops for telling personal stories. Authors who do this in the nonfiction framework must take care to accurately portray actual events and not distort history for dramatic effect. Satrapi's book is full of distortion, in part because she wants to exonerate Iranian leftists from their responsibility in raising the mullahs to power.
As awful as the action of the religious fanatics were, certain reactions of intellectuals were hardly any better. I recall a scene in the book (p. 285 of my copy) where Satrapi has appeared for a rendezvous fully made up. A van filled with Revolutionary Guards suddenly appears, making Satrapi worried about how they might treat her because of wearing make-up. She suddenly thinks of accusing an innocent bystander of saying something indecent to her, in order to deflect attention from herself. The poor young man is taken away, as he pleads with the guards and Satrapi that he is innocent. A few panels later, Satrapi and her boyfriend have a laugh over the incident as they characterize Satrapi's survival instinct as "too cool!" What might have happened to the falsely-accused guy in the custody of Revolutionary Guards did not concern them at all.
Persepolis is an important book, given its sociopolitical themes and strong feminism content. I would have given it 3 stars were it not for these positive elements.
2024/08/27 (Tuesday): Today, I offer reviews of two books by political commentator Fareed zakaria.
(1) Book review: Zakaria, Fareed, Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present, unabridged 13-hour audiobook, read by the author, Simon & Schuster Audio, 2024.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Political commentator Fareed Zakaria sees the present era to be revolutionary, involving fundamental changes marked not necessarily by advances but by retreats into ideologies once discarded. In this regard, Donald Trump fits right in with the global trend, embracing the politics of resentment against the other, be they nonwhite newcomers or members of the urban elite. Zakaria tells us that he has worked on this project, originally entitled "Beyond Left and Right," for years, taking detours to complete other, shorter projects.
As a fine example of early liberal revolutions, the establishment of the Dutch Republic brought with it a celebration of individual rights and toleration of religious minorities, along with an entrepreneurial spirit that made Holland the wealthiest nation on the planet. Similarly, the post-Glorious-Revolution British government supported inventors, rewarded technological innovation, and introduced parliamentary rule, along with market capitalism, pushing the nation well ahead of its neighbors.
Zakaria's points are well-argued and thought-provoking. He asks, for example, why the US is the only industrial nation that never developed a socialist movement. Perhaps it was because the US never experienced feudalism as such, and its ruling class "obscured the strict lines of class conflict that fed socialism." Absent socialism, the country instead developed a liberal democracy along the lines of the old Dutch Republic, and prospered as a result.
Despite the prosperity that liberalism has brought to the US, Americans have, by and large, a negative view of the term, often equating it with leftist ideas or socialism. The US benefited over many decades from the greatest strength of liberalism, that is, freeing people from arbitrary constraints, but it is now facing liberalism's greatest weakness, "the inability to fill the void when old structures crumble."
We are now at a juncture where old structures are collapsing on every side, with no fresh solutions being advanced from the right or the left. The most-prominent messenger of change happens to be an incompetent, morally-bankrupt character who focuses on what's wrong, emphasizing grievances over rights and fixes. He advocates turning to pre-World-War-II isolationism and protectionism as a way to restore simpler times, when workers worked and masters enjoyed their leisure. Do we really have to go back to those days to realize that they weren't as perfect as they are depicted to be by the far right?
In his concluding chapter, Zakaria quotes the influential American journalist Walter Lipman, who wrote these words in 1929 about the negative impacts of the revolutions that produced modern life: "By the dissolution of their ancestral ways, men have been deprived of the sense of certainty as to why they were born, why they must work, whom they must love, what they must honor, where they may turn in sorrow and defeat." These words resonate in America's current sociopolitical landscape.
(2) Book review: Zakaria, Fareed, In Defense of a Liberal Education, unabridged 4-hour audiobook, read by the author, Simon & Schuster Audio, 2015. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
The debate between skills-based education and broad liberal arts education is never-ending. Zakaria presents ample reasons for the latter approach working better, as evidenced by the success of the United States in leading the world in innovation and tech advances. Countries like China, South Korea, Japan, and even India focus on teaching skills and on selection on the basis of test scores. All of these countries do well on quantitative measures of performance on math and science topics, but they do not produce self-confident individuals who can thrive in a rapidly-changing world.
Previously, I read and reviewed David Epstein's Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, Giving it 4 stars. According to Epstein, avoiding super-specialization, or combining breadth and depth, allows you to benefit from the outsider advantage. The very top scientists participate in activities outside their areas of expertise. The higher up they are in scientific prestige, the more likely they are to have outside interests. In today's complex world, people who think broadly and embrace diverse experiences & perspectives will increasingly thrive.
Citing his own experience of growing up in India, where tests and specialization rule, Zakaria tells us that he followed his brother's example of getting a college education in the US, where education is broad-based and places great emphasis on reading and writing skills. This approach obviously worked for him, because it gave him the communications and analytic skills to become a sociopolitical commentator and successful TV host. For a while, the success formula in the US seemed to be "enroll in college, drop out, establish a tech company in your garage, rake millions."
As I write this review, the US is moving further away from broad-based liberal-arts education in favor of job skills. Proceeding in this direction would turn our highly successful universities into glorified trade schools. Many countries copied, with good results, the liberal-arts education approach of great American universities, who are now bent on copying other countries' less-successful narrow education and skills-based training.
2024/08/26 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Barcelona loves/hates tourism: The Spanish city's residents are feeling the frustrations of overtourism, including congestion, pollution, and disregard for local culture. But economically, the city remains reliant on visitors. [Top center] Persian calligraphic art. [Top right] Bearer of the Liberty Torch. [Bottom left] I've had this drawing board for at least 35 years: Its last use was probably three decades ago. Still, I can't bring myself to part with it! [Bottom center] Design revealed for Grand Stade Hassan II, to become the world's largest stadium for the 2030 World Cup in Morocco. [Bottom right] Course on practicing mindfulness (see the last item below).
(2) Honored by Dr. Amin Lifetime Achievement Award: The formal award will be presented on Saturday 8/31 at the 2024 Sharif University of Technology Association (SUTA) reunion in Niagara Falls, Canada. Since I won't be able to attend, I recorded this message (in Persian) for the attendees.
(3) The citation black market: There are growing concerns about a black market that allows scientists to purchase bogus citations to pad their Google Scholar profiles. NYU computer scientists conducted a sting operation by purchasing 50 citations for $300 and adding them to a fake Google Scholar profile they created. The researchers also proposed a citation-concentration index to identify scientists with a large number of citations from only a few sources.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Russia targets Ukraine's energy infrastructure with hundreds of missiles, causing widespread blackouts.
- Hezbollah and Israel have intensified their rocket fight near the Israel-Lebanon border.
- Israel is intensely searching for the new Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.
- Donald Trump chickens out of the September 10 ABC-sponsored debate with Kamala Harris.
(5) Course review: Muesse, Prof. Mark W. (Rhodes College), Practicing Mindfulness: An Introduction to Meditation, 24 lectures in the "Great Courses" series, The Teaching Company, 2011.
[My 2-star review of this course on GoodReads]
I lost interest in this course early on, but didn't want to give up on it. So, I continued listening by sampling each of the remaining 23 lectures. So, my review isn't complete and may in fact be unfair.
My main beef is that the material is intertwined with religious notions, often in indirect or subtle ways. The main message is that mindfulness requires much resolve and effort, whereas, counterintuitively, mindlessness, our default setting, entails a great deal of thinking, judging, and worrying. Our inner voices continuously comment on and judge everything we encounter, preventing us from focusing on our experiences and other important matters.
Left alone, the human mind tends to go to one of two places: The past or the future. We seldom focus on or engage with the present. We are often not in control of our minds and can't turn off the annoying inner voices. Aspects of mindfulness include awareness, relinquishing preconceptions, morality, focusing on breathing, wisdom, compassion, embracing our flaws & physical discomforts, giving, minding our language, cooling our anger, learning to accept loss, and living in the face of death.
Titles of the 24 lectures and a brief description of each lecture can be found on this page.
I enjoyed and recommend a previous read on meditation: Sam Harris's second book on the subject, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-To Book (my review).
2024/08/25 (Sunday): Today, I present reviews of four books on voting and elections. These books are among the refernce sources for my UCSB graduate seminar ECE 594BB, which I will teach during fall 2024.
(1) Book review: Brams, Steven J. and Peter C. Fishburn, Approval Voting, Birkhauser, 1983 (2nd ed. Springer 2007).
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
For 5+ decades now, I have been studying voting schemes in connection with reliable computer systems using multiple independent computation channels. More recently, I have expanded my studies to voting in sociopolitical contexts, hoping that the expanded view might offer applications and benefits to reliable computing.
Voting is quite simple when we have only two candidates, but having 3+ candidates can give rise to anomalies and improper results. Consequently, mathematicians and social scientists have been studying many different voting schemes in order to minimize such anomalies and improper results. Plurality voting, the one we use most widely, is particularly prone to undesirable effects such as vote-splitting and spoiler candidates. When combined with a second-round run-off election, problem cases subside, but they don't completely go away.
In approval voting, a voter isn't forced to just pick one candidate, his/her most-preferred, but can "approve" any number of candidates. Each approved candidate receives one vote, and the candidate with the most vote wins. Vote-splitting does not occur, because a voter may approve more than one candidate, so s/he won't be forced to choose between his/her first and second choices, say. Similarly, spoiler candidates, who have virtually no chance of being elected, won't take away votes from mainstream choices.
There is a theoretical "impossibility" result, known as Arrow's Theorem, that shows no voting scheme is perfect, in that, given any voting scheme, we can construct examples to violate one or more of the axioms of "good" voting schemes. Approval voting, the subject of this book, comes close to being an ideal voting scheme.
Chapter 1 of the book offers a wrap-up summary of the main ideas in simple, non-mathematical terms. The casual reader will be convinced by the arguments and discussions in Chapter 1 that approval voting is better than plurality voting, even when a run-off round is added to the latter. The remaining 9 chapters get quite mathematical, which may not be to some readers' liking.
To apply voting schemes in the sociopolitical context, we need practicality in addition to scientific merit. Approval voting isn't much more difficult to implement than plurality voting. Existing voting technology, perhaps with small modifications, would suffice. Plurality voting is also easily understood by voters, and is thus unlikely to cause confusion.
We have no choice but to update our laws and procedures, as we uncover their flaws and learn about doing things more logically. Approval voting appears to strike a reasonable balance between mathematical guarantees of appropriate behavior and practicality of implementation.
I will end this review with a quote from an 1816 letter of Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kerchaval: "I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times."
[P.S.: The authors state that they have changed very little in the book's second edition, aiming only to correct minor errors in the original text, in part because Brams discusses recent research on approval voting in Mathematics and Democracy: Designing Better Voting and Fair-Division Procedures, with key elements also appearing in the authors' joint journal articles.]
(2) Book review: Borgers, Christoph, Mathematics of Social Choice: Voting, Compensation, and Division, SIAM, 2020.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I was drawn to this book because of its discussion of voting methods in Part I (Chapters 1-12, pp. 1-91). The book's Part II (Chapters 13-15, pp. 93-118) covers compensation schemes and its Part III (Chapters 16-26, pp. 119-192) deals with equitable division. There are four appendices on sets, logic, mathematical induction, and solutions to selected exercises (pp. 195-242).
Let me provide a brief overview of Parts II and III, before turning to Part I. Fair division of resources is a branch of mathematical economics. When the resource isn't continuously divisible, such as a house or a car in a divorce case, the problem is to determine a fair compensation by one party to the other who gets to keep the resource. A continuously-divisible resource can be likened to a cake. If one person cuts the cake into two pieces and a second person picks his/her piece, then neither side can complain. Fair compensation or division when 3+ parties are involved is more challenging.
My interest in Part I arises from 5+ decades of studying voting schemes in connection with reliable computer systems using multiple independent computation channels. More recently, I have expanded my studies to voting in sociopolitical contexts, hoping that the expanded view might offer applications and benefits to reliable computing. Voting is quite simple when we have only two candidates, but having 3+ candidates can give rise to anomalies and improper results. Borgers succeeds in conveying the mathematical depth of voting systems and their potential anomalies.
Even though Borgers' discussion of voting systems takes up only 91 pages, the presentation is rather dense and covers a lot of ground. The key notions of Condorcet winner, election spoilers, monotonicity, irrelevant comparisons, strategic voting, ranking of candidates, and Arrow's impossibility theorems are all there, but Borgers covers many other ideas and theorems that are new to me. The large number of exercises, and solutions to a selected subset, is a plus when using the book as part of course material.
(3) Book review: Poundstone, William, Gaming the Vote: Why Elections Aren't Fair (and What We Can Do About It), Hill and Wang, 2008. [My 3-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This book is presented in 3 parts and 17 chapters. The prologue sets the stage by considering the problem of fringe and spoiler candidates who taint elections without having a real chance of winning. "Since 2004, the gaming of the spoiler effect has burgeoned and become thoroughly bipartisan. In the 2006 elections, no fewer than five key races had Democratic money funding spoilers to hurt Republicans or vice versa. The funds not only aided ballot drives but also paid for TV, radio, and print ads the spoilers could not otherwise have afforded" [p. 22].
Part I, Chapters 1-6 (pp. 23-130), defines the problem. Chapter titles are "Game Theory," "The Big Bang," "A Short History of Vote Splitting," "The Most Evil Man in America," "Run, Ralph, Run," and "Year of the Spoiler." We learn, among other things, that in a couple of figure-skating contests, the order of the top three contenders changed once a fourth skater performed and was scored below the top three. The figure-skating world was shocked and vowed to fix the scoring system. Similar anomalies can arise in the world of elections under certain voting systems.
Part II, Chapters 7-15 (pp. 131-258), discusses the solution. Chapter titles are "Trouble in Kiribati," "The New Belfry," "Instant Runoff," "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Cycle," "Buckley and the Clones," "Bad Santa," "Last Man Standing," "Hot or Not," and "Present but Not Voting." Among other ideas, advantages of the instant-runoff system (which is quite close to another system known as single transferable vote) are described. We also learn about Donald Saari, voting research's Bad Santa, because he spoils other researchers' fun by finding flaws in their proposed voting systems. Saari was once an advocate of approval voting, but later turned against it.
Part III, Chapters 16-17 (pp. 259-283), addresses the reality. Chapter titles are "The Way Democracy Will Be" and "Blue Man Coup." Near the end of this part, the author advocates for a real-world trial of instant-runoff, range, or approval voting. We can always go back to approval voting if the experiment doesn't work, but we must give some of these methods a try. Reform requires experimentation and courage to try new things.
(4) Book review: Herrnson, Paul S., Richard G. Niemi, Michael J. Hanmer, Benjamin B. Bederson, Frederick C. Conrad, and Michael W. Traugott, Voting Technology: The Not-So-Simple Act of Casting a Ballot, Brookings Institution, 2008. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
For decades, voting technology consisted of paper ballots that were hand-counted. Then, we started using special ballot formats to enable machine-counting. In principle, with the widespread availability of the Internet and advances in digital authentication, we should be able to vote on-line, bypassing the need for voting precincts, paper ballots (or voting machines), and vote-counting gadgets, but lack of trust in the reliability and security of digital systems and concerns about access and fairness have prevented this ideal from materializing.
This book covers variations in and issues surrounding voting technology in 7 chapters and 3 appendices, as follows:
Chapter 1. The Study of Electronic Voting
Chapter 2. A New Generation of Voting Systems
Chapter 3. Voter Reaction to Electronic Voting Systems
Chapter 4. The Accuracy of Electronic Voting Systems
Chapter 5. Inequality in the Voting Booth
Chapter 6. Vote Verification Systems
Chapter 7. Toward More User-Friendly Voting and Election Systems
Appendix A. Voter Information Guides and Questionnaires
Appendix B. Characteristics of Respondents in the Field Studies
Appendix C. Regression Results for Chapters 5 and 6
As paper or on-screen ballots have grown in size and complexity, automating the process of casting ballots, tallying votes, and validating the results have become more urgent. None of these aspects is trivial in an election with millions of voters and dozens of candidates. Equally urgent is introduction of standards to engender familiarity and voter education to avoid errors and intimidation (which can hamper participation).
The voting system (plurality, run-off, rank-ordering, Borda, and so on) is a different story, but whichever system is chosen through societal consensus, adhering to the rules and executing it in a transparent and trustworthy manner is essential. Perhaps we will see reforms in voting technology within our lifetime, but widespread adoption of new technologies is always challenging.
2024/08/24 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] The Venice Film Festival has become a major predictor of success during the awards season. [Center] Jennifer Lopez keeps expanding her collection of exes: Ben Affleck is the newest addition. [Right] Richard Francis's Epigentics (see the last item below).
(2) Delayed return flight: Two NASA astronauts who flew to the ISS on a Boeing Starliner and were slated to return in a couple of weeks will stay there until they can return on a SpaceX module in 2025. Starliner has developed problems that make it unsafe for crewed flight, so it will be returned without passengers.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The Kennedy name lost much of its prestige with RFK Jr.'s campaign musings and endorsement of Trump.
- The Gateway Arch in St. Louis: Its unique design and how it was built. [10-minute video]
- Humorist Hadi Khorsandi recites his poem on how the Islamic Revolution affected Iran.
- Neil deGrasse Tyson explains bolides, asteroids, meteors, and meteorites. [8-minute video]
(4) Blaming the people: The Iranian regime wants to raise gas prices, but given the deadly street protests after the last gas-price increase, it is claiming, through a social-media campaign, that people demand a price adjustment. No, they don't. People are already crushed by the high cost of living and rampant inflation.
(5) Book review: Francis, Richard C., Epigenetics: The Ultimate Mystery of Inheritance, W. W. Norton & Company, 2011.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
The term "epigenetics" means "on the gene," the relatively recent discovery that stress and environmental factors can impact an individual's psychology so deeply that the resulting biological "scars" are potentially inherited by multiple generations that follow. For example, men who start to smoke before puberty increase the chance of obesity for their sons. Epigenetics is now believed to hold the key to understanding not just obesity, but also diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer's, schizophrenia, and autism.
Epigenetics has established beyond any doubt that while genes are quite important, they are subject to regulation by forces that can turn them on or off, sometimes for a lifetime or even across generations. Epigenetic changes are above and beyond longer-term changes due to random mutations and natural selection.
This first general introduction to epigenetics is driven by many stories such as the Dutch famine of World War II, Jose Canseco & steroids, breeding of mules & hinnies, Tasmanian devils, and contagious cancer. Each chapter in the book starts with an entertaining or intriguing example of how epigenetics affects human and animal biology and inheritance, followed by detailed discussion of the mechanisms at work.
After a brief general review of genetics in Chapters 2-3, Francis devotes Chapters 4-6 to epigenetic gene regulation and how it is influenced by the environment, beginning in the womb. Chapter 7 covers the inheritance of epigenetic states, elaborating further on the long-term effects of the Dutch famine. The final four Chapters provide additional details on epigenetics, including its applications in stem-cell and cancer research. The book's extensive notes and bibliography span pp. 162-181 and 182-215, respectively.
The Dutch Famine of the mid-1940s constitutes an important example. When, near the end of World War II, Germans were retreating from Eastern Europe, they decided to punish the Dutch resistance by destroying much of their infrastructure and flooding their agricultural fields. The ensuing famine led to ~20,000 deaths and had other devastating effects on the population, particularly, on pregnant women, whose malnutrition led to deficiencies in their babies and multiple subsequent generations. The Dutch kept meticulous health records, which allowed detailed studies of the effect of the famine and jump-started the field of epigenetics. Such large-scale human experiments are nearly impossible to plan, given limitations on the use of human subjects.
2024/08/23 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] An old cartoon that aroused my attention because I'll be teaching an undergraduate circuits course (ECE 10A) during winter 2025. Ohm's law is at the very beginning of the course! [Center] Iranian cleric: We have received a message from Imam Zaman (the 12th Shi'i Imam who is in hiding) to hold off on attacking Israel! [Right] New Yorker cartoon: Spending the day in the sun.
(2) Kamala Harris hits it out of the ballpark: She promises to be President for all Americans, operate with common sense, rebuild the middle class, establish an opportunity economy, and respect the rule of law.
(3) World's second-largest diamond: A 2492-carat gem-quality diamond was found in Botswana this week. What's the largest? The 3105-carat Cullinan diamond, found in South Africa in 1905 and divided into smaller gems. Some are among the British Crown Jewels.
(4) Is a revolution possible in Russia? On the surface, it appears that Putin is firmly in control. But there is growing opposition to the war in Ukraine and hints of unrest among people stuck with low wages. Regime change in Russia will of course affect Russians and Ukrainians the most, but the Islamic regime in Iran will also be a big loser. [Related Business Insider story]
(5) Question: How long can you keep those little ketchup, dressing, & mayo packets from fast food joints?
Answer: Use them in a couple of weeks at most. You never know how old they are when you get them.
(6) Did you know that Toyota engines are used in certain models of other car brands? Here's a partial list: BMW; Chevy; Geo; Lotus; Pontiac; Subaru; Suzuki.
(7) Cash for finding scientific errors: Europe's Estimating the Reliability and Robustness of Research (ERROR) project offers payments to reviewers who spot errors in code, statistical analyses, and reference citations in psychology and psychology-related papers. Modeled after software bug-bounty programs, reviewers receive up to 1000 Swiss francs (around US $1172) for each paper they analyze, with bonuses for identified errors, including up to $2930 for errors requiring a major correction notice or a retraction. Meanwhile, authors are paid $293 for making data available & answering questions, and another $293 if only minor errors are detected.
2024/08/21 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] America should move forward to greatness, not backward. [Center] Follow this sage advice: I did, right after getting this fortune-cookie message yesterday. It definitely worked! [Right] IEEE CCS tech talk on energy storage technologies (see the last item below).
(2) Michelle Obama's brilliant speech at the Democratic National Convention.
(3) Stephanie Grisham, former Trump official who resigned in the January 6 aftermath, speaks at the Democratic National Convention, revealing what Trump says about his supporters when cameras are off.
(4) A new type of nuclear proliferation: Conventional nuclear bombs are difficult to make, because they need highly-enriched uranium. However, a dirty-bomb capable of doing much damage can be built by terrorists from advanced-reactor fuel. The threat is rising due to a new emphasis on nuclear power to achieve net-zero carbon emission by 2050.
(5) Tonight's IEEE Central Coast Section tech talk (in-person and WebEx event): Yours truly spoke under the title "Energy Storage Technologies to Facilitate the Use of Renewable Energy." [51-minute recording]
Renewable energy is gradually becoming cost-competitive, as we invest more in developing new production and storage technologies. The storage part is critical and needs significantly more effort. Production levels of renewable energy, solar and wind in particular, tend to be variable. Such supply variations, combined with natural variations in demand, give rise to the need for storing energy, in much the same way that we store grains in silos to smooth out the variations in when & where they are produced and when & where they are needed. In the case of grains, even year-to-year variations due to weather, pests, and natural disasters can be tolerated with sufficient storage capacity.
There is no reason why similar smoothing methods cannot be used for energy. The fact that we have not been investing more in developing energy-storage technologies is a direct result of the "low cost" of energy derived from oil, gas, & coal and the exorbitantly-funded campaign by the fossil-fuel industry to brand renewable energy as "expensive." However, most cost comparisons are unfair, because they ignore environmental and other indirect costs. Mitigating the effects of harmful emissions from burning fossil fuels is rather expensive, a figure we should include in their life-cycle cost. If we do so, the so-called “green premium” will vanish or even become negative.
I briefly surveyed a number of existing and emerging energy storage technologies, from mechanical (flywheel, pumped hydro, gravity, compressed air, liquid piston), through chemical & electrochemical (hydrogen, biofuel, biodiesel, supercapacitors, batteries), to superconducting & cryogenic (magnetic, liquid air). Strengths and weaknesses of the various approaches were enumerated. Emphasis was placed on the solar-battery combo, which is finding its way into homes and businesses throughout the world. These small-scale solar-battery nodes can be likened to PC-disk nodes, which together with larger-scale server-storage nodes constitute the Internet. In a similar manner, an Intergrid of energy can be conceived which will fuel the Third Industrial Revolution.
2024/08/20 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Respecting the fact that the tree was there first: If only the same respect was shown to US Native Americans. [Center] It sure took a long time and many attempts for a woman to rise to the pinnacle of political power in the US. It's still not a done deal, but if it does happen, many women deserve the credit; Shirley Chisholm, Geraldine Ferraro, and Hillary Clinton, to name just three. And, now, Kamala Harris is the bearer of the torch. [Right] Cover feature of IEEE Spectrum magazine (see the last item below).
(2) Making platonic connections: City dwellers and remote workers who feel lonely can now use apps to arrange group meals with strangers.
(3) Justice not served: Chrystul Kizer was 17 when she killed a man who filmed his sexual abuse of her for more than a year. She has been sentenced to 11 years in prison.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Major Hezbollah ammunition depot in south Lebanon targeted by Israel.
- Iranian officials admit that mass exodus of nurses and other healthcare workers is a serious problem.
- The proposed cabinet of the Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian reflects Iran's institutional stagnation.
- Facebook memory from Aug. 20, 2019: Friendship may develop into love, but not the other way around.
(4) A trailblazing woman tech journalist retires: Tekla S. Perry joined the staff of IEEE Spectrum magazine in 1979. Her stories, which she began writing with notepads and pencils, have stood the test of time and constitute a history of the Silicon Valley and electronics technology. I will miss Perry's stories in IEEE Spectrum, a magazine which I read regularly.
(5) Quote of the day: "In voting for Vice President Harris, I assume that her public policy views are vastly different from my own but I am indifferent in this election as to her policy views on any issues other than America's Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law, as I believe all Americans should be." ~ Conservative judge Michael Luttig
(6) The hunt for rogue planets: Our galaxy may hold a trillion wandering sunless planets, but finding them isn't easy. Rogue planets are created in various ways:
- Ejection from orbit due to encounter with a larger planet.
- Independent formation from gas & dust in stellar nurseries.
- Destabilization due to encounter with another star.
- Being put loose due to explosive death of a giant star.
These planets are shaking up astronomers' ideas about planetary formation. Only giant planets formed in-place (#2 above) can be directly observed, because they emit enough heat to be detected with an infrared telescope.
2024/08/18 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] The West is complicit in the way women are treated in certain societies, such as Afghnaistan and Iran. [Center & Right] Two math puzzles involving two & three squares.
(2) Alain Delon [1935-2024], heartthrob and prolific French actor, dead at 88: During my youth, he was seemingly on every movie poster and a subject in every gossip column. I have seen many of his movies (he was a most-popular star in Iran), yet I can't name any of the films off-hand. It has been said that there is no French cinema without Alain Delon. RIP. [Alain Delon's profile, through his interviews]
(3) The US presidential race has devolved into a beauty pageant: At a campaign rally, Trump compared his looks to his opponent’s, claiming that he was better-looking. [Tweet, with photos]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Our 2024 choice in a nutshell: Prosecutor & coach/veteran vs. real-estate developer & venture capitalist.
- The Soviet-era Minsk Aircraft Carrier, previously converted to a theme park in China, destroyed by fire.
- Webinar: Fighting agents and influencers acting in the West on behalf of Iran's Islamic regime. [Details]
- Child prodigy plays Vivaldi, with skill and infectious joy!
- African proverb: The sheep will spend its entire life fearing the wolf, only to be eaten by the shepherd.
- Facebook memory from Aug. 19, 2019: Mediocre passions vs. great ones.
(4) Iran-linked social media accounts used ChatGPT to generate posts and comments with disinformation about the US election: OpenAI has disrupted the operation and closed the accounts, which were mostly unsuccessful, because they did not produce much likes, comments, or sharers.
(5) University of California prepares for campus protests: In a letter to the UC community, President Michael Drake reiterated the importance of free speech on campus and urged the formulation of clear/transparent policies regarding camping and other campus obstructions.
(6) Final thought for the day: A batch of books that I took home from my UCSB office today, shown covering my car trunk and the entire back seat. I will have to repeat this transfer two more times to complete the process before my retirement. [Tweet, with photos]
2024/08/17 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] When I see a woman athlete embrace her significant other upon winning a race or earning a medal, I feel sorry for Iranian women athletes who have to muffle their joy as they stand all alone, because Islam does not allow a public display of affection. [Center] A view of the Caspian Sea, with Alborz Mountains of Iran at the bottom and the Caucuses on the left.
[Right] MS World Discoverer (a German expedition cruise ship) hit an uncharted reef in Solomon Islands on April 29, 2000.
(2) On price stability: For many years, I remember buying Roma tomatoes for $0.99/lb. I am sure the market price fluctuated for various reasons, but grocery stores took the loss, when needed, to offer consumers a stable price. Not anymore! After a shortage of a few weeks to prepare the consumers, Roma tomatoes came back at a price of $1.49-$1.99. Many fruits, such as apples, peaches, and grapes, that used to sell for around $1.50/lb are now offered at $3.00-$4.00/lb. Merchants pass on market price increases to consumers right away, which is a sure cause of inflation beyond what we would have if prices were kept stable for a while.
(3) Free book containing almost all the math you need for machine learning: Algebra, Topology, Differential Calculus, and Optimization Theory for Computer Science and Machine Learning, Jean Gallier and Jocelyn Quaintance, Dept. Computer & Information Science, U. Pennsylvania.
[PDF]
(4) The terrorist ambassador, turned professor: The German government had evidence of Seyed Hossein Mousavian's involvement in the terror of Iranian dissidents abroad, but chose to let him go for fear of the mullah's retaliatory actions. [Tweet]
(5) Copper mining cannot keep up with ramp-up of EVs (from E&T magazine, July-August 2024): Copper is needed in all aspects of electricity generation, storage, and distribution. A new study reveals that by 2050, the world needs to mine 115% more copper than has been mined in all of history just to meet current needs, without even considering the green-energy transition.
(6) Israeli army officers sing a Persian song made famous by Hayedeh to show the bonds of friendship between Israeli and Iranian people. [Tweet, with video]
(7) The technology of electric cars is ~200 years old: From Ben Franklin's electric motors, through cheap oil derailing the progress, to market maturity, we have come a long way. [E&T magazine, July-August 2024]
(8) Final thought for the day: Apparently, someone mentioned to Trump that Harris has an edge in looks. In his latest rally, Trump claimed that he is better-looking than Harris!
2024/08/15 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Henry Yang's 31-year tenure as UCSB Chancellor is coming to an end (see the next item below). [Top center] Throwback Thursday: Royal Tehran Hilton, 1962 (zoom in on room balconies). [Top right] Throwback Thursday: My mom, her two sisters, her oldest brother, and a younger family member. [Bottom left] Trump wins the gold medal in lying while breaking the world record. [Bottom center] Don't buy the lies that everything was hunky-dory under Trump: We paid a lot for his presidency. [Bottom right] Royal Society consider the implications of AI to the scientific enterprise (see the last item below).
(2) UCSB's Chancellor Henry Yang to step down: In a letter to the campus community, Chancellor Yang indicated that he will step down at the end of the 2024-2025 academic year, returning to research and teaching. Yang came to UCSB in 1994 from his former position as Dean of Engineering at Purdue University, making him the longest-serving chancellor in the history of the UC system. Under his leadership, UCSB grew to become a top-ranking public university in the US, making significant progress in research production & funding, campus facilities, academic prestige, and worldwide recognition. He will be missed!
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- WHO declares the rapid spread of mpox in African countries a global emergency.
- Eric Schmidt blames Google's woes on remote work policies: Other employers are also on board.
- This is Jerusalem, the capital of Israel. [Tweet, with video]
- Preparing for ten hot days in Goleta, a lot better in Ventura.
[Tweet, with images]
- Iranian music: Pallett performs "From Eastern Lands." [7-minute video]
- Persian poetry: A poem by Yaghma Neyshaburi, the brick-maker who offered sage advice.
(4) "Science in the Age of AI": This is the title of a May 2024 Royal Society report, bearing the subtitle "How artificial intelligence is changing the nature and method of scientific research."
The 108-page PDF document begins with an executive summary, which outlines key findings & future research questions, a set of four recommendations, and the following five chapters, sandwiched between an introduction and a conclusion.
- How AI is transforming scientific research
- Research integrity and trustworthiness
- Research skills and interdisciplinarity
- Research, innovation and the private sector
- Research ethics and AI safety
A key theme is that AI tools for science must follow the traditions of openness and reproducibility.
2024/08/13 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] VP Kamala Harris on the cover of Time magazine. [Center] The Colosseum is incredible, but it isn't unique: There are over 200 Ancient Roman arenas, on three different continents, many of which held over 50,000 people. And the Romans even built one stadium with a capacity of 150,000. [Right] Math puzzle: How many triangles do you see in this figure?
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Trump campaign hacked by Iran: Internal e-mails & a vetting file on J. D. Vance are supplied to the media.
- California partners with Nvidia to bring AI resources & skills to students, faculty, and developers.
- J. D. Vance is probably better-educated than D. J. Trump but he makes the same kinds of false claims.
- An Iranian top official: "Our society isn't mentally prepared to accept the guidance and leadership of women."
- My favorite fortune-cookie message: You're never too old to learn something new.
(4) Heat-trapping "glitter" proposed for warming up Mars: The median Martian surface temperature is –65 degrees Celsius. The proposed method is viewed as an initial step for making Mars more habitable to humans. Since iron and aluminum are abundant on the surface of Mars, the material can be made locally, rather than shipped from Earth.
(5) Stanford U. athletes won 39 medals at the Paris Olympics, surpassing the medal counts of countries like the Netherlands, South Korea, Germany, and Canada. Texas, Cal, and Harvard also earned quite a few medals.
(6) One consequence of extreme heat: Those who receive their meds through mail should be aware that summer temperatures inside delivery trucks can reach 150 F, potentially damaging medications.
(7) The Trump-Musk show: I watched the X (Twitter) chat between the criminally-indicted fellow and the Tesla guy, who reportedly wants to be an advisor in the next Trump administration. It was a lie-fest, with Trump doing much of the talking and Musk adoringly offering his approval. UAW has filed federal labor charges against the duo for threatening workers in the course of the program.
(8) IEEE Central Coast Section tech talk on Wednesday, August 21, 2024, 6:00 PM: Yours truly will speak on "Energy Storage Technologies to Facilitate the Use of Renewable Energy." [Free registration]
2024/08/11 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] A mind-boggling optical illusion. [Center] The American people are ready for a president who smiles as she talks about friendship and hope. We are tired of dour faces talking of gloom and doom. [Right] he 2024 Paris Olympics closes (see the last item below).
(2) Today's farmers market at Goleta's Camino Real Marketplace, with musical entertainment by the trio Strings & Arrows. [Video 1]
Video 2]
(3) How China solved the problem of putting tens of thousands of characters (words) onto a keyboard with only dozens of keys. [13-minute video]
(4) We use D, C, AA, AAA, and AAAA batteries: What happened to B and A battery sizes? These missing battery sizes were defined and existed at one point, but given the fairly small size & capacity spacings between C and AA, the B and A sizes do not provide sufficient advantages in compactness or storage capacity, so over time they fell out of favor.
(5) On our fascination with sports:
The 2024 Paris Olympics coming to an end is a bittersweet experience for me. I watched the games very selectively, owing to some events not being of much interest to me and because I had a limited amount of time to watch. Football (soccer), basketball, volleyball, and some gymnastics took up the bulk of my TV time. I will miss watching so much quality sports.
As I look back on the 17-day experience, I keep wondering about the reasons we enjoy watching sports. If we compare sports to music, say, we know that music is good for us, whether we participate as a player or just listen and move to it. The recent book Music and Mind, edited by Renee Fleming, leaves little doubt about how music improves our mental acuity and makes life more enjoyable overall.
In the case of sports, there are definite benefits to participation but, as far as I know, no evidence of significant health benefits in watching. Certain sports do have artistic elements and watching them can presumably bring us the same benefits as art. But there are also the less charitable reasons for watching athletes compete, much in the same way that Romans watched gladiators.
Regardless of the tribalism implied in enjoying the sports that are most-popular in our country and cheering on our country's participants, the Olympics does bring us the joys of seeing athletes from the entire world come together despite their obvious differences. There is something noble in accepting defeat by a more-skilled opponent or team and going back to the drawing board to improve our deficiencies, whether it is for doing better in the next Olympics or for the satisfaction of excellence.
2024/08/10 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Iranian women earning Olympics medals: What a display of women's power to backward rulers who don't recognize women as full human beings (see the next item below). [Center] Visual challenge: Do you see the number? [Right] Let's take science out of the colonial era (see the last item below).
(2) Three Iranian-born women earn Olympics medals in taekwondo: Two of them, competing in a match for Iran and Bulgaria, used to be good friends. These women have delivered a kick in the face to a mullah, who once said women's worth isn't measured by whether they can kick but by how well they raise children.
(3) Roya Hakakian writes about her motivation to investigate the story of Mohammad Jafar Mahallati at Oberlin: An Islamist who rose to the professorial rank among serious scholars.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Russia has issued a strong warning to Iran against targeting Israel.
- No one utters the word "truth" more than the most-contemptible liar.
- Facebook memory from Aug. 9, 2018: Iranian music, with mixed Persian-Azeri lyrics.
- Facebook memory from Aug. 10, 2017: On anti-Semitism in Iran.
(5) Olympics gold-medal match in women's soccer/football: USA played Brazil, the teams having previously beaten Germany and Spain, respectively, in the semifinals. Somewhat surprisingly for such an important match, the play was wide-open in the first half, which ended up 0-0, despite several scoring opportunities for both teams. Brazil became quite dominant in the final 10 minutes before halftime.
Twelve minutes into the second half, Swanson's speed paid off, as she put a through pass past the Brazil goalie. The 1-0 score persisted through the end of the second half (which included 10 minutes of stoppage time). Brazil again dominated in the last 10 minutes, coming close to equalizing on multiple occasions.
This is the US women national soccer team's fifth Olympics gold medal.
P.S.: I saw more shots of Tom Cruise in the stands than of the US coach on the sideline!
(6) The colonial legacy of science: Science, in its modern form, emerged from the Enlightenment-era Europe. At the time, a handful of European countries exerted political and economic control over more than half the world. The colonialists enslaved people and extracted precious metals, spices, and other wealth from their lands. The term "parachute science" was coined for the situation when foreign scientists were dropped in and wrote about problems in distant lands, with minimal involvement from local scientists. That legacy is still with us. For example, a 2019 study found that fewer than half of papers on infectious diseases in Africa had an African first author. We have to recognize this colonial legacy and work to allow researchers in once-colonized nations to become full partners in science.
2024/08/08 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Political executions continue in the Islamic Republic of Iran, regardless of who is the president. [Center] Pyramid of palindromic prime numbers: In this example, each number appears in the middle part of the next number. There are other pyramids formed by palindromic primes. [Right] Talangor Group talk on genetics (see the last item below).
(2) Trouble in space: Two NASA astronauts, who traveled on Boeing’s Starliner to the Int'l Space Station in June for a planned 8-day mission, will stay there until February, because their return vehicle has developed problems that make it potentially unsafe.
(3) Three Taylor Swift concerts in Vienna are cancelled after discovery of plans by two teenagers to carry out an Islamic-State-inspired attack with explosives and weapons.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- President Pezeshkian writes to Khamenei, asking him to refrain from a full-scale war with Israel. [Meme]
- Hamas' new political leader demonstrates his education program for kindergartners. [Photo]
- The airship that became a flying aircraft carrier.
- Iran's George Floyd: Afghan teenager suffers a broken neck, when security forces pin him to the ground.
(5) Tonight's Talangor Group meeting: Dr. Davood Kolbehdari spoke under the title "Genetics and Breeding." Before the main talk, Dr. Farid Akhbari gave a short presentation on "The Psychology of Tattoos," covering a history spanning thousands of years and mental/social reasons for their prevalence. There were ~85 attendees.
Dr. Kolbehdari began by citing the prediction that by 2050, we need to produce 70% more food, given the estimated ~2 billion growth in world population and the expected rise in the standard of living for billions of people in the developing world. The question facing humanity is how we can grow so much more food, without further destroying the planet.
An obvious answer is the use of higher-yielding crops and more-efficient agricultural and pest-control methods. For example, in the case of corn, a staple of the American diet, the nearly-constant yield during 1860-1940 began to take off in the 1940s due to advances in genetics. Unfortunately, greedy agricultural companies do not allow the people to gain maximum benefits from the rising crop yields, because they restrict access or charge exorbitant fees for patent-protected seeds that they develop.
Dr. Kolbehdari cited many examples of advances in high-yielding crops and the legal battles over their use and abuse. Fortunately, the patents associated with the seeds for such crops have a 20-year protection, but so far, advances have been so quick that it isn't cost-effective to use 20-year-old seeds in lieu of the most recent offerings.
A natural question, which I asked at the end of the talk, is why limit ourselves to pursuing improved crops and agricultural innovations. Like any other matter, various food products can be synthesized from their molecular components. In my humble opinion, synthetic food production method, which are now in their infancy, will be scaled up to make agriculture, as it is known today, obsolete. Here is an informative article on the benefits and challenges of synthetic food.
2024/08/07 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Kamala Harris taps Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota as her running mate: Walz's fatherly looks and Midwest small-town credentials appear to complement Harris's big-city background. [Center] Math puzzle: In this diagram of 3 concentric circles, find the exact value of x. [Right] Black Diamond apples are currently grown only in the mountains of Tibet. [Right]
(2) Extreme hypocrisy: MAGA politicians, who consider masking and vaccination impositions on their freedom & privacy, have no problem telling women that they must have more babies and obey their husbands.
(3) Language is more than just a communication tool: Yes, language allows us to express our thoughts, but it also helps shape them. In this 23-minute Persian video, the effect of language on how we think is discussed. [Equivalent 14-minute TED talk, in English]
(4) If you think the Higgs boson particle is an unpromising subject for a Broadway musical, you're not alone: David Henry Hwang of "M. Butterfly" fame, unmoved when the idea was first pitched to him years ago, has since come around and is now developing a musical based on the discovery in 2012 of the infamous particle.
(5) Olympics women's soccer: USA, which beat Germany 4-1 in the group stage, faced the Germans again in a semifinal game today. The first half went scoreless, with the US looking somewhat disorganized and Germany looking quite beatable.
Neither team played like an Olympics champion in the scoreless second half. Smith put the US ahead on a through pass in minute 5 of the first overtime period. Both teams dodged bullets a couple of minutes from the end of the match, putting the US in the gold-medal game with the 1-0 score. [4-minute highlights]
(6) Archaeologists Find a 2,400-Year-Old "Pot of Gold" in Turkey: An ancient hoard of Persian coins offers insights into the political landscape around the time of the Peloponnesian War.
(7) US antitrust-law violation: Judge rules that Google has an illegal monopoly on Internet search.
(8) The US presidential race: Harris is closing the gap with Trump and in some cases enjoys a small lead, as traditional Democratic voters are coming back and some Republicans are inclined to vote for Harris in order to give their party a chance to recover from the disgrace of Trump. According to a group of Republicans: "... our party's nominee is not qualified for office ... It is time to put partisan loyalties aside and vote for the leadership that will truly represent the people we want to be in the eyes of the world. Character matters."
2024/08/05 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Kamala Harris didn't suddenly become black, as Donald Trump claims (see the next item below). [Top center] New Yorker cartoon of the day: Donald Trump vs. Kamala Harris presidential debate. [Top right] Former Iranian FM Javad Zarif and President Masoud Pezeshkian (see the last item below). [Bottom row] Belated spring cleaning: One of my summer projects is to get rid of decades worth of technical journals and conference proceedings. Here you see one load out of a dozen or so loads already recycled. In the course of cleaning, I discovered many transparencies, which were used with overhead projectors before PowerPoint slides and digital projectors took over.
(2) In her 2019 autobiography, Kamala Harris wrote: "My mother understood very well that she was raising two black daughters. She knew that her adopted homeland would see Maya and me as black girls, and she was determined to make sure we would grow into confident, proud black women."
(3) Parhelion: A natural phenomenon, when three suns are seen in the sky, the Sun itself and two reflections in ice crystals falling down from clouds. [Tweet, with video feom China]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- First anti-trust ruling of the modern Internet era: Google acted illegally to maintain its search monopoly.
- Campus protests and possibly academic strikes in the US will reportedly return with the start of the fall term.
- Dozens of military men, some of them high-ranking, arrested in Iran on suspicion of spying for Israel.
- Sergei Shoigu, Secretary of Russia's Security Council, is in Tehran for high-level talks. [IranWire.com]
- War on arts & artists: Iran's Islamic authorities continue to threaten and imprison artists.
- If you wouldn't buy a used car from someone, you shouldn't vote him into office. [Tweet, with meme]
- Facebook memory from August 5, 2015: "Yar Injidi," a beautiful Azeri song.
(5) Bangladeshis celebrate after forcing their PM to flee the country: Some have characterized the protesters as Islamists, but this joyful singing doesn't sound Islamist to me.
(6) Final thought for the day: Iran's former FM Javad "we have no political prisoners in Iran" Zarif is back on airwaves and on social media, spreading lies and denying the brutal acts of the Islamic regime. He was once unceremoniously dumped by the hardliners. I really hope that he is dumped again. People like him, who can speak good English and present seemingly coherent arguments internationally are more dangerous than the inarticulate religious fanatics. As the Persian saying goes, a thief who carries a bright light can take more-valuable items. The government of President Masoud Pezeshkian is already sidelined by the IRCG, which makes official statements and issues threats in the aftermath of Ismail Haniyeh's assassination in Tehran.
2024/08/04 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] A double-birthday celebration in our family and the dinner menu. [Top right] Cat-lady-themed merchandise and the ",la" (comma la) moniker are trending. [Bottom left] Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco, CA. [Bottom center] Balloons at the Paris Olympics (see the next item below). [Bottom right] Renee Fleming's Music and Mind (see the last item below).
(2) Air balloons at the Paris Olympics: The opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympics featured a Montgolfier balloon reference and air balloons have been featured in various promos and graphics for the event. The papermaker French brothers Joseph-Michel Montgolfier & Jacques-Etienne Montgolfier launched the era of spectacular hot air balloon flights in the late 18th century. The first humans to take to the air in free flight did so aboard one of their balloons.
(3) Women's Olympics soccer quarterfinals (USA 1-0 Japan): Japan played tight, marking defense for the entire first half, disrupting the normal game flow for the US. Patient ball control followed by a few over-the-top long passes didn’t work for the US, leading to a scoreless game at halftime.
The second half and the entire first 15-minute overtime period also went scoreless, with both teams having some scoring chances. Then, in minute 2 of stoppage time, Rodman scored the game's only goal on a through pass and some wonderful footwork.
[7-minute highlights]
(4) Smart speed bumps: Badennova, a Spanish company, makes smart speed bumps from non-Newtonian fluids that exhibit variable viscosity under stress. When used in speed bumps, they stay soft at low speeds but harden when you drive over them too fast.
(5) Book review: Fleming, Renee (editor), Music and Mind: Harnessing the Arts for Health and Wellness, unabridged 22-hour audiobook, read by Gina Daniels and six others, Penguin Audio, 2024.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This book, composed of a large number of essays, begins with a foreword by former Director of NIH, Nobel Laureate Francis S. Collins, who tells us about his surreal experience of singing with three Supreme Court Justices and soprano Renee Fleming at a gathering, an event that made him bent on having NIH support more research on the connection between arts (music in particular) and neuroscience.
Then, following an "Overture" by Fleming herself, chapters written by a wide variety of scientists and artists unfold, beginning with a chapter entitled "How and Why: Experts Explain the Basic Science Connecting Arts and Health, Including Origins in Evolution: Musicality, Evolution, and Animal Response to Music," which sets the stage for the rest of the material.
Contributors to this volume make a convincing case that the arts empower and heal, collectively presenting a manifesto for neuroarts, the transdisciplinary study of how the arts and aesthetic experiences measurably change the body, brain, and behavior and how this knowledge is translated into specific practices that advance health and wellbeing.
We learn, among other things, that all forms of music, not just classical music, have relaxing effects. Moving to musical rhythms is part of our nature, something that develops quite early. Even though music therapy has been practiced for a couple of centuries, only recently has it been taken seriously for the treatment of physical and mental ailments. Even now, insurance companies tend not to pay for the cost of music therapy.
It is unfortunate that as evidence on the empowering and healing power of music and other art forms piles up, schools in the United States continue to trim arts programs to save money. Lack of a place for arts in public education limits artistic activities to the well-to-do, further exacerbating the opportunity divide. It is my hope that Fleming's book brings our school officials and politicians to their senses, making them support (including by providing ample funding) arts education across the K-12 curriculum.
2024/08/03 (Saturday): Today, I present reviews of three books on history, finance, and politics.
(1) Course review: Lee, John W. I., The Persian Empire, 24 lectures in the "Great Courses" series, undated.
[My 5-star review of this course on GoodReads]
I discovered this course by accident and was delighted by its content and by the fact that it is taught by a distinguished UCSB colleague, John W. I. Lee. Professor Lee has many academic honors to his name, including an Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award and the Harold J. Plous Memorial Award.
Professor Lee aims to corrects the negative view of the Persian Empire, which emerged from accounts by the Greek, leading to Persians being depicted in histories and films as the bad guys, the villains who were ruled by despotic leaders and lost the Battle of Marathon. Examining the Persian Empire from the Persian perspective yields a vastly different picture. We see the Persian Empire as a major force with a lasting influence on the world in terms of administration, economics, religion, and architecture.
Professor Lee tells us that as part of his research for this course, he studied American textbooks from the 1800s and 1900s. In 19th-century textbooks, writers go from describing the Persians fairly positively to calling them despotic, decadent, barbaric Orientals. By 1900, a popular textbook summed up the new view: One Greek was better than 10 Asiatics! And Hollywood (e.g., in the film "300") helped perpetuate the negative view.
The sources used by Professor Lee include:
- Greek historical writings, which are obviously biased, but because Persians did not write their own history, Greek writings remain important sources, when checked against other corroborating evidence.
- Stories in the Hebrew Bible, which are likely overly idealized.
- Travelers and their writings.
- Archaeological discoveries, including accounts of the same events in three different languages, which facilitated decoding and allowed cross-checking.
- Thousands of Persepolis tablets, found during a fortification project, which contained official royal or governmental records.
- Documents in Aramaic, flowing from Egypt, where the dry weather provided the requisite conditions for preservation.
The Persian Empire [559-323 BCE] was arguably the world's first global power. A diverse, multicultural empire with flourishing businesses and people on the move; an empire of information, made possible by a highly advanced infrastructure that included roads, canals, bridges, and a courier system. And the kings of Persia's Achaemenid dynasty (notably Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes) presided over an empire that created a tremendous legacy for subsequent history.
Professor Lee discusses many of the aspects named above in nearly chronological order: From the founding of the Empire; through capitals, palaces, & roads, challenges & battles, expansion, cultures & religion, city & country life, and the role of women; to the Empire's dissolution and its legacies.
According to Professor Lee, history of the Persian Empire isn't a static subject. Just as new discoveries in recent decades have created significant changes in our views, future archaeological discoveries will likely bring about additional changes.
For a list of the 24 lectures and a brief description of each, see this Web page.
(2) Book review: Galloway, Scott, The Algebra of Wealth: A Simple Formula for Financial Security, unabridged 8-hour audiobook, read by the author, Penguin Audio, 2024.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This book can be put in the category of financial self-improvement. It collects in one place everything a non-expert must know in order to achieve financial security in the shortest possible time. Financial security is defined as having enough assets to cover expenses from the proceeds. The model of a person working for 30+ years before retiring and drawing income from pensions or investments is obsolete. In the modern world, one can attain financial security at age 40, say, and then decide whether s/he wants to continue to work for professional improvement and/or satisfaction.
Galloway presents in four fairly long chapters his personal formula for achieving financial freedom based on the four principles of Stoicism, focus, time, and diversification. He maintains that we can eliminate economic anxiety through a combination of well-paid work, diversified investments, and good financial habits. What he calls the algebra of wealth is represented by the following formula:
Wealth = Focus + (Stoicism * Time * Diversification)
Chapter 1. Stoicism: A fundamental tenet of stoicism is discerning what is under our control and what is not. Living below your means, practicing financial discipline, and controlling your spending are essential aspects of financial stoicism. Central to the tenets of stoicism is a strong character. Do toot your own horn in order to advance as quickly as possible, but also develop kindness, generosity, and willingness to help others.
Chapter 2. Focus: To get started, you must earn an income, the more, the better. You should follow your talent rather than your passion in order to maximize your earning potential. You should invest in improving your skills and building relationships, both personal and professional. It is unfortunate that people have to change jobs in order to earn a fair salary for their skills. If necessary, do play that game: Get a job offer and ask your employer to match it.
Chapter 3. Time: Your most-important asset is time. In fact, all wealth comes directly or indirectly from time. If necessary, delegate tasks to paid workers in order to free your own time for more important stuff. When you are young, you have plenty of time and you must use that time to earn income and start the ball rolling on compounding. A small monthly saving when you are 20 can create more wealth than a much larger amount that you set aside beginning at 50, owing to the effects of compounding.
Chapter 4. Diversification: This is the most-complicated chapter and covers more material than the previous chapters. In a nutshell, diversification is about risk mitigation and avoidance of over-commitment. It requires a good understanding of financial concepts and of the markets. Everyone should learn about investment, various financial instruments, risk & return, taxation, and post- & pre-tax retirement savings. Galloway goes out of his way to advise against day-trading. He prefers to focus instead on index funds that perform better than almost any other investment.
In short, you need discipline and humility. Don't credit your gains to your own brilliance and your losses to external factors. Chance plays a big part in both. Following a disciplined approach will allow you to build up on your gains and learn from your losses.
(3) Book review: Tsang, Steve and Olivia Cheung, The Political Thought of Xi Jinping, unabridged 11-hour audiobook, read by Rebecca Lam, HighBridge Audio, 2024.
[My 3-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Xi Jinping, China's President (in practice, its Supreme Leader), is the least-known of the leaders of the world's major powers. So, given that China has the world's second economy and, by some accounts, may overtake the US within a few years, this book is a timely addition to the genre of political biographies.
Xi Jinping has made significant changes to China's political system, its economy, and its relationships with the rest of the world. Xi's ruling philosophy and worldview is called "Xi Thought" in this book. Xi has cemented his Thought (what we in the West call doctrine) as the new state ideology. After having the party rescind the limit of two 5-year terms for the top leader, he began his third term in 2022, essentially making him leader for life.
Xi dreams of replacing the American-dominated world order with a Sino-centric order in which China has resumed its rightful place as the top country in terms of power, wealth, advancement, civilization, and benevolence. Any alternative vision or history is banned. Collective leadership at the top has been transformed into an echo chamber. Party members are required to study Xi Thought on a daily basis, using an app. Xi Thought is also fully integrated into China's education system.
Xi views his Thought, strongly influenced by Mao Zedong Thought, as "China Dream of National Rejuvenation," a "Make China Great Again" vision, to be realized by 2050. He sees no reason for China not being the world's leading power, given its glorious history and record of successes. In Xi's telling, a point of pride for China is that it has never invaded another country, a demonstrably-false claim.
Fighting corruption is one of the main tenets of Xi Thought. When he took over in 2012, corruption was rampant. Party leaders had lost ideological conviction, had their individual fiefdoms, and were pursuing their private interests. For China's problems, Xi blames both the West and the prior leaders' opening up policies.
The authors have used Xi's speeches, writings, and issued policies to conceptualize Xi's vision independently of narratives provided by the Chinese Communist Party or other official sources in China. For example, Xi deems loyalty to China, to the Communist Party, and to him as being one and the same. He has upended the communism principle of rule by a committee of equals to place himself on top of a hierarchy that is not allowed by communism.
Both the writing of the book and narration of the audio version are dry and uninspiring. Perhaps this dryness is inevitable for a book derived from speeches, writings, and policies, rather than from insider accounts and personal interviews. But the latter style would be quite impractical in the case of the Chinese leader.
2024/08/02 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Getting rid of prickles in plants (see the next item below). [Center] Stealing the customer's time, bit by bit (see item 3 below). [Right] Ananka Harris' Conscious (see the last item below).
(2) Do you want to forget Anne Bronte's musing, "he that dare not grasp the thorn / should never crave the rose"? Are you tired of waiting for love to turn the thorns into flowers, as Mowlavi/Rumi suggested?
Welcome to the age of gene editing! You can get rid of the prickles (the correct word for thorns) altogether and have flowers only: Pure, beautiful flowers! From an evolutionary standpoint, prickles serve to defend a plant against herbivores.
According to an article by Elizabeth A. Kellogg in the August 2, 2024, issue of Science, "Plant prickles are controlled by genes involved in the final step of cytokinin biosynthesis."
From another article by Satterlee et al., we learn that "homologous genes control prickle formation in all of these species [that have prickles]," providing an answer to the question of how similar features are developed on unrelated organisms.
(3) Time-wasting steps in stores and on-line: Lately, one has to answer a few questions on the grocery-store keypad, before being allowed to proceed with payment. Charity round-ups and other donations are the usual culprits. If I want to help a charity, I will do it at the time and in the amount of my choosing. A random few cents isn't my idea of helping.
The situation is worse on-line. You want to do on-line banking? First, you have to read ads about special offers, then scroll to the bottom of the ad, before you are allowed to do your business. On-line message in-boxes, which are intended for urgent messages/alerts to customers, are routinely filled with ads and offers.
I often complain to merchants who waste my time in this way, but the complaint seldom results in changes. Taking your business elsewhere is the only way to get back at such merchants.
(4) Book review: Harris, Annaka, Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind, HarperCollins, 2019. [My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Science writer Annaka Harris, who happens to be the spouse of Sam Harris, focuses on neuroscience and physics. In this 130-page gem of a book, Harris does a phenomenal job of exposing the mysteries of the mind, consciousness, and free will. She doesn't waste any time before attempting to define consciousness, quoting Thomas Nagel's "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?":
"An organism is conscious if there is something that it is like to be that organism."
Now considering the spectrum of organisms "bacterium, oak tree, worm, ant, mouse, dog, human" at some point along the sequence, the answer to the question "Is there something that it is like to be that organism" turns from "no" to "yes." The question that has occupied us for centuries is why the light turns on for some collections of matter in the universe but not for others.
Harris takes her working definition of consciousness and runs with it to discuss intuitions and illusions (Chapter 2), our brain being free when it decides to act in a certain way based on inputs received but the case for conscious free will being more shaky (Chapter 3), how the way certain parasites that affect the behavior of their hosts turn our intuition of free will upside-down (Chapter 4), who we are, or the notion of "self" (Chapter 5), whether consciousness is everywhere, referred to as panpsychism, and not a property of only certain collections of matter (Chapter 6), whether consciousness exists without thinking or even any inputs to our brain (Chapter 7), and the relationship between the mystery of consciousness and the mystery of time (Chapter 8).
Time sits squarely at the center of most physical mysteries, including consciousness. The two views of time are known as presentism (only the present is real and the perceived one-way movement of time is an illusion) and eternalism (just because we are at a certain instant of time doesn't mean that other instants do not exist). "As we continue to look out from our planet and contemplate the nature of reality, we should remember that there is a mystery right here where we stand." [the book's final sentence, p. 110]
2024/08/01 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Soccer star Nadia Nadim (see the next item below). [Center] Swiss Army Knife is a well-built, versatile tool that is appreciated worldwide (NYT ad). [Right] Misogyny or stupidity? You decide!
(2) Nadia Nadim, a role model, and not just for girls: Her father was killed by the Taliban when she was 11 and her family fled Afghanistan in the back of a truck. Nadia has scored nearly 200 goals in professional soccer and represented the Danish national team on 98 occasions. She has finished medical school and is studying to become a reconstructive surgeon when her playing days are over. She speaks 11 languages fluently and is on the Forbes list of the most powerful women in international sports.
(3) The latest in an ever-changing explanation: Ismail Haniyeh, the top Hamas leader assassinated in Tehran, was killed by a remotely-controlled bomb smuggled into his guesthouse months ago. [NYT]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Four US nationals were released by Russia in a massive deal involving 7 countries and 24 prisoners.
- Someone sign up Trump for a course on race: A person can be both Indian-American & African-American.
- Midtown Manhattan 23-story office building, sold for $332M in 2006, changed hands again for $8.5M.
- Agnotology: Study of deliberate, culturally-induced ignorance, typically to sell a product or influence opinion.
(5) Agnoiology: Theoretical study of the quality and conditions of ignorance, and in particular of what can truly be considered "unknowable" (as distinct from "unknown"). The term was coined by James Frederick Ferrier, in his Institutes of Metaphysic (1854), as a foil to the theory of knowledge, or epistemology.
(6) What's wrong with our justice system? In a deal with the US government, the 9/11 mastermind and two associates plead guilty in exchange for removing the death penalty from consideration. Why this deal now, 23 years after the crime? Why haven't these despicable criminals been tried already? I am against the death penalty, but if it is still an option in the US, why remove it from consideration in the most atrocious crime ever?
2024/07/31 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] US women gymnasts earn gold, while Simone Biles establishes herself as the best-ever by earning her 10th individual title. [Center] Math puzzle: In this diagram, featuring a rectangle of side lengths a & b and a semicircle, find the height h in terms of a and b. [Right] Steven Pinker's The Stuff of Thought (see the last item below).
(2) Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Tehran: His death has been confirmed by multiple sources inside & outside Iran. Earlier on Tuesday, Haniyeh had attended the inauguration of Iran's new president and met Iran's Supreme Leader.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Meta pays $1.4 billion to settle a Texas lawsuit alleging abuse of users' biometric data.
- Elon Musk's retweet of an altered Kamala Harris video is viewed 120 million times.
(4) Book review: Pinker, Steven, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature, unabridged 10-hour audiobook, read by Dean Olsher, Penguin Audio, 2007.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Steven Pinker, Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University, conducts research on language, cognition, and social relations. He has been the subject of controversies over his sociopolitical views, including musings about progressives who don't believe in progress and the claim that racist attitudes in the US declined during the Trump regime. However, none of these detracts from my respect for him as a scientist.
Having recently read linguist Amanda Montell's Wordslut (my review), a condemnation of language's role in oppressing women and treating them as social miscreants (e.g., via the usage of the words "slut" and "bitch"), I jumped at the chance of reading Pinker's broader study of language as a window into human nature. Pinker's eloquence is on full display in this wonderful book.
Pinker theorizes that language functions at two levels at all times. Using the example "If you could pass the salt, that would be great," he points to a dilemma faced by the requester, who does not want to be seen as ordering people around while also wanting to have them pass the salt; hence, the polite non-request in lieu of a direct request. I would add to Pinker's two levels a third level known as "doublespeak": The use of language to deceive, control, and oppress.
Pinker's The Stuff of Thought overlaps with Montell's Wordslut when he discusses the syntax of swearing and swear words in the chapter "The Seven Words You Can't Say on Television" (Pinker later published a book by this title). Why we swear, how taboos change over time, and how we use obscenities in different ways, are among the fascinating questions addressed in this chapter. Why do so many swear words involve sex, bodily functions, and religion? Why would a democracy deter the use of words for two activities, sex and excretion, that harm no one?
There is a lot more in Pinker's tour de force. Our use of prepositions & tenses taps into the human concepts of space and time, and our nouns & verbs speak to our notions of matter. Even how we name our babies has important things to say about our relations to our children and to society.
I highly recommend this brilliantly-crafted and highly readable book to anyone who is curious about the development of language and how it is driven by and mirrors human nature.
2024/07/30 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [left] Cover feature of Sciecne magazine on air pollution (see the next item below). [Center] Gender equality is finally achieved at the 2024 Olympics. [Right] Emily Nussbaum's Cue the Sun: The Invention of Reality TV (see the last item below).
(2) From Science magazine's special section on air pollution: "Air is an essential but invisible resource. When we notice it, it is usually because of suspended dust, smoke, ash, or haze. Such particulates—along with harmful gases, chemical vapors, and suspended biological agents—constitute air pollution. The health and environmental effects of exposure to air pollutants have long been apparent and are now increasingly well documented in terms of overall life expectancy as well as incidence of asthma, cancer, and cardiopulmonary disease." [Issue of July 26, 2024]
(3) Book review: Nussbaum, Emily, Cue the Sun: The Invention of Reality TV, unabridged 15-hour audiobook, read by Gabra Zackman, Random House Audio, 2024.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Described derisively as "dirty documentaries" and flatteringly as "unscripted series," reality TV shows are much older than most people think. Besides game shows, which go way back, an early program in the genre was "Candid Camera," which recorded behaviors and reactions of unsuspecting observers of peculiar, artificially-created events for comic effect. The program had radio roots in "The Candid Microphone," also created and hosted by Allen Funt.
The modern embodiments of the genre range from low-budget program fillers to megahits such as "Survivor," "Big Brother," and "The Bachelor." The shows elicit reactions from contempt to fascination, sometimes both at the same time. Many audience members watch them while holding their noses. Some of the most-successful embodiments of the genre use conflict and embarrassment as tools to create situations that draw in audiences, who are sometimes conflicted and/or embarrassed to watch.
With the exception of "Candid Camera" and a few competition programs, such as "American Idol," I had little interest in reality TV, so I was drawn to this book to learn what all the fuss was about. I was surprised to find out that early interest in reality TV was in part motivated by making the networks' programming strike-proof.
Nussbaum covers much ground in the first 12 chapters:
- The Reveal: Queen for a Day and Candid Camera
- The Gong: The Filthy, Farkakte Chuck Barris 1970s
- The Betrayal: An American Family
- The Clip: America's Funniest Home Videos and Cops
- The House: The Real World
- The Con: The Nihilistic Fox '90s
- The Game: The Invention of Survivor (and Mark Burnett)
- The Island: Survivor: Borneo
- The Feed: Big Brother
- The Explosion: Reality Blows Up and Becomes an Industry
- The Rose: The Bachelor and Joe Millionaire
- The Wink: Bravo and the Gentrification of Reality TV
Given Donald Trump's rise to the US presidency owing, in large part, to his reality NBC show "The Apprentice," Nussbaum had really no choice but to include him in the narrative, which she does in the final Chapter 13. "Taking a failed tycoon who was heavily in hock and too risky for almost any bank to lend to, a crude, impulsive, bigoted, multiply-bankrupt ignoramus, a sexual predator so reckless he openly harassed women on his show, then finding a way to make him look attractive enough to elect as president of the United States? That was a coup, even if no one could brag about it."
2024/07/29 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Center] Let's keep the plight of Iranian women in our hearts and minds, as we are distracted by a steady stream of news about the ongoing Gaza war, US elections, and Paris Olympics. [Right] Fiesta Centennial: Celebrating its 100th year, Old Spanish Days (Fiesta) in Santa Barbara is a tradition that honors the city's history, spirit, culture, heritage, and traditions. The annual five-day festival takes place this year from July 31 to August 4, 2024.
(2) A rocket fired from Lebanon kills a dozen children playing in Golan Heights soccer field: Overall, 30 children were transported to hospitals. Evidence points to Iranian-made rockets of Hezbollah.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- President Biden commemorated the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act at the LBJ Presidential Library.
- J. D. Vance's musings on family & raising children are hypocritical in view of his own family background.
- Canada's women's Olympics soccer coach/team penalized for spying on rivals with a drone.
- Comic legend Bob Newhart accepts the 2002 Mark Twain Prize for comedy.
- Vance-ing Queen: ABBA song politicized!
- Facebook memory from July 29, 2012: "Keep your words sweet. Someday you may have to eat them."
- Facebook memory from July 29, 2010: A Persian couplet from Abou-Saeid Abolkheir.
(4) Women's Olympics soccer: After starting somewhat shaky and escaping a near-fatal defensive mistake, the US women scored first, with Germany evening up the match at 1-1 midway through the first half. USA responded minutes later to take the lead, adding another goal for a 3-1 advantage at halftime.
Play in the first 30 minutes of the second half was sloppy, with Germany having more scoring chances. After some back-and-forth, Williams scored a goal near the end of the match (89') to cement the impressive 4-1 US victory. The other three US goals were by Swanson (26') and Smith (10', 44').
(6) Milestone for Ottawa's Persian-language radio program: Congratulations to Mr. Mehdi Fallahi and his collaborators, who are celebrating 23 years on the air and 1200th episode for their Namaashoum program. Monday, August 5, 2024, 7:00-9:00 PM on CKCU 93.1 FM, website, or Telegram channel.
2024/07/28 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Earth image, captured by Japan's iSpace HAKUTO-R lunar lander during a recent solar eclipse. [Center] A work by Shamsia Hassani, lecturer in fine arts and first known Afghan graffiti artist. [Right] Stephen Hawking's The Universe in a Nutshell (see the last item below).
(2) Applying the "duck test": If he doesn't live like a Christian, doesn't act like a Christian, and doesn't talk like a Christian, then he probably isn't a Christian!
(3) When US-led economic sanctions crushed Syria's elite, they maintained their grip on power through a multibillion-dollar illicit drug industry.
(4) Trump thinks that voting is a nuisance: He urges his "beautiful Christians" to get out and vote just this one time, because if he is elected, he will fix the system so that they don't have to vote ever again.
(5) I am so proud of my daugther who spent Saturday afternoon in Los Angeles to participate in an event to help people with various disabilities enjoy paddle-boarding & other water activities.
(6) Billy Joel bids farewell to Madison Square Garden: Over the last 10 years, Joel, 75, has performed his classic '70s & '80s hits at MSG; a run of 104 shows, with 2 million attendees and $260+ million ticket sales.
(7) Book review: Hawking, Stephen, The Universe in a Nutshell, unabridged 3-hour audiobook, read by Simon Prebble, Random House Audio, 2001. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Hawking considers this book a sequel to A Brief History of Time, a hugely successful science book that sold a copy for every 750 Earth inhabitants and was translated into dozens of languages. The Universe in a Nutshell aims to update the public about developments since the 1988 book was published. Summaries of the book's 7 chapters follow.
Chapter 1 offers simplified explanations of Einstein's Special/General Theory of Relativity, which form the bases of almost all modern concepts of our universe.
Chapter 2 uses Einstein's theories and some of Hawking's own groundbreaking work to show how time can come to a stop when mass collapses to super-density.
Chapter 3 uses Einstein's theories and quantum mechanics to view the universe as a set of different "histories," and discusses the ongoing work on a unified theory.
Chapter 4 considers time and the possibility of looking forward into the future, suggesting that black holes might destroy the info we try to glean about the future.
Chapter 5 notes that even though a sufficiently advanced civilization should be able to visit the past, tiny success probabilities make this feat practically impossible.
Chapter 6 theorizes that ever-increasing speed of technological and biological advancements will make future humans orders-of-magnitude more complex than us.
Chapter 7 updates the so-called "string theory" with "p-brane" theory, which includes the disturbing possibility that our entire universe is just a hologram.
2024/07/27 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] The 2024 Paris Olympics begins with a fanfare. And, of course, the Eiffel Tower must feature prominently in any Paris-Olympics story! [Top center] New Yorker cartoon of the day: New Olympics sports for a much hotter world that awaits us owing to climate change. [Top right] Science humor! [Bottom left] English lecture and Persian poetry-reading by Iranian author/poet Moniro Ravanipour (see the next item below). [Bottom center & right] Talk on history of feminism (see the last item below).
(2) "The Story of Memories: Against Silence and Oblivion": This was the title of yesterday's talk by Iranian author & poet Moniro Ravanipour, delivered as the 2024 Elahe Omidyar Mir-Djalali Distinguished Lecture. Following the English lecture, the program consisted of an interlude with musical performance, Persian poetry-reading from the new book Give Me a Piece of Autumn, another musical performance, and closing remarks.
A recording of the program will likely appear on the Elahe Omidyar Mir-Djalali Institute Web site.
Here is a 2020 talk by Ravanipour on roughly the same subject.
Interestingly, Ravanipour, who is one of the most-important contemporary Persian authors/poets, did not start writing until after Iran's Islamic Revolution.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Something beautiful to start the weekend with: Vivaldi "Storm," by two accordionists.
- In Santa Barbara, Cox Cable covers some Olympics events on Channels 618 (PARS1) and 619 (PARS2).
- Olympics men's soccer: France got a big scare from Guinea, before finally scoring in the 75th minute.
- In Olympics men's soccer, Iraq withstood Argentina's attacks for 2/3 of the game, but eventually fell 1-3.
(4) "History of Feminism: Developments Along the Path of Acquiring Human Rights for Women": This was the tile of a comprehensive talk by Ms. Mitra Zaimi (computer specialist & social activist) as part of the UCLA Salamat group (ucsalamat.net/) Zoom meeting series, offered in conjunction with the Human Foundation (bonyad-ensan.com). There were ~50 attendees.
Ms. Zaimi began by reviewing the four waves of feminism, emerging shortly after the French Revolution, in which women played a big part.
First Wave: 1800s-1920s
Second Wave: 1960s-1970s
Third Wave: 1990s-now
Fourth Wave: 2010s-now
For each of the four waves of feminism, Ms. Zaimi presented key sources/events (e.g., books/thinkers) that drove the movement.
The word "feminism," which had been used pejoratively to refer to men who were not viewed as being sufficiently masculine, assumed its modern meaning in 1948.
In the second part of her talk, Ms. Zaimi focused on women's movements in Iran, discussing among other thigs, the role of women in ancient Persia, struggles over voting rights, religious fundamentalism that led to numerous misogynistic laws and many campaigns that oppose them.
2024/07/26 (Friday): Today, I write about a 2-day educational/training retreat I attened in Malibu.
(1) Reflections on a teacher-training retreat in Malibu, California: I have been involved with NAMI (National Alliance for Mental Illness) for several months now. NAMI strives to create a better tomorrow where all people affected by mental illness can experience hope, recovery, and wellness in a world free of stigma.
Following my attendance at a NAMI Family-to-Family class, I volunteered and was chosen to attend a 2-day training program for individuals who want to help by leading Family-to-Family classes.
The training program was held Wed.-Thu., July 24-25, 2024, at Serra Retreat, in the beautiful hills of Malibu, California. The Retreat is at the site of an old mansion which was purchased by a religious organization and dedicated to use as a retreat center for various groups.
The 2-day program was packed with advice on how to conduct a course, how to avoid giving misleading information by strictly following the content guidelines, how to monitor class participants for signs of distress, and how to deal with disruptions and emergencies.
(2) On scaling up efforts to spread public awareness of mental illness: Much has been written about the sorry state of mental healthcare in the US. Despite some improvement due to efforts of National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI), of which I am a member and a volunteer, and similar organizations, lack of public awareness of various diagnoses and the associated social stigma persists. NAMI has educational programs that raise public awareness and provide tools for family members impacted by the illness of a loved one to help them in navigating mental-health services and understanding the range of diagnoses and treatment options.
I recently read the book The Genius of Israel, by Dan Senor and Saul Singer, which is about the remarkable social resilience of the small nation, which remains happy and optimistic in the face of internal challenges and external threats. Though not a sequel to Start-Up Nation by the same authors, the book discusses the same kinds of innovative approaches to solving tough problems.
One aspect that caught my eye is Israel's outsize film and TV industries, despite the miniscule market for films in Hebrew. For example, the highly successful American series "Homeland" was adapted from the Israeli series "Prisoners of War." An Israeli TV series that is relevant to my topic here portrays a psychologist who treats patients at his clinic five days a week and then seeks psychological treatment for himself. A similar US series would go a long way toward scaling up efforts to spread public knowledge about mental illness and confronting the stigma that comes with lack of awareness.
2024/07/25 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Throwback Thursday: Street photographers in Mashhad, Iran (ca. 1949), looking for customers among pilgrims. [top center] New Yorker cartoon of the day: "Yeah, tell the boss we found them." [Top right] Singer/showman/poet Fereydoon Farrokhzad, who was assassinated by Khamenei's agents in 1992, is buried in Bonn, with his grave site bearing a verse of a longer poem he had composed for his tombstone. [Bottom left & center] Just a couple of beautiful symmetric patterns. [Bottom right] Dominic Erdozain's One Nation Under Guns (see the last item below).
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Let the race begin: Will America choose a sex offender or a former prosecutor who convicted sex offenders?
- Following Biden's withdrawal, Trump's age and health are under renewed scrutiny. [Washington Post]
- Trump uses the nickname "Lyin' Kamala" for his new election rival: That's rich, coming from Liar-in-Chief!
- The tables have turned: Trump is now the oldest presidential nominee in US history!
- They're attacking Harris for being childless: Imagine the attacks if she had 5 kids by 3 different husbands!
- UCSB Library has acquired the papers of Nobel Laureate and ECE professor Herbert Kroemer (1928–2024).
(3) Book review: Erdozain, Dominic, One Nation Under Guns: How Gun Culture Destroys Our History and Threatens Our Democracy, unabridged 6-hour audiobook, read by Dan Bittner, Random House Audio, 2024.
[My 5-star review of this book on Goodreads]
This is a book about how the Second Amendment to the US Constitution was distorted into a guarantee for an individual right to bear arms. "There is no mystery to the Second Amendment. The mystery is how one part of America convinced itself that privately-held guns were the foundations of democracy and how everyone else was bullied into acquiescence."
The cost of unchecked gun ownership isn't limited to the 100+ lives lost daily to gun violence, which is already too high. It also includes social anxiety and the fear of public spaces, which are anathema to the notion of freedom. Instead of asking fundamental questions about the place of guns in our society, we are entangled in secondary notions of background checks and banning certain types of ammunition and some classes of high-power weapons.
Historian Erdozain traces the roots of the gun culture to racism and nationalism, which created a rogue and reckless freedom based on birth and blood; a far cry from the liberty promised by our Constitution. The simplistic view of our society being composed of good guys and bad guys, with good guys needing arms to defend themselves against bad guys, is one of the contributing factors. The good guys are thought to be pure and angelic, and they will use their guns to defend the society against the bad guys. This myth has been busted time and again by stats that show the vast majority of gun deaths are not caused by crazy mass-shooters but by the "good guys" who commit errors, are enraged by romantic conflicts, or lose it after too many drinks. Under our gun culture, the most-dangerous room in a house is the bedroom!
In our gun culture, self-righteous "good guys" often act as police officers, judges, juries, and executioners. Stats also show that a tiny fraction of gun deaths are due to a good guy taking on a bad guy in self-defense or in defense of others. By 2008, when the US Supreme Court reinvented the Second Amendment in District of Columbia v. Heller, most American had already acceded to the notion of an armed society. Saving our democracy requires that we go back to the founders' ideas of what it means to be free.
2024/07/23 (Tuesday): Today, I present reviews of two books on US politics, plus an interesting image.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Clay Cane's The Grift (see the next item below). [Center] Thirteen pictures of the sun, each month, same place, same time. [Right] The Situation Room, by George Stephanopoulos and Lisa Dickey (see the last item below).
(2) Book review: Cane, Clay, The Grift: The Downward Spiral of Black Republicans from the Party of Lincoln to the Cult of Trump, unabridged 10-hour audiobook, read by the author, Recorded Books, 2024.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This book is an assault on Black politicians who have accepted the Republican Party's priorities and policies, many of them going as far as becoming full-blown Trump supporters. They are tolerated within the GOP, as long as they know their place and do not rock the boat. Often, they are discarded like used tissues, once they have outlived their usefulness to the Party. Such Black politicians are described as grifters, enriching themselves and/or gaining political power at the expense of average Black Americans and other disadvantaged groups.
A notable example of such grifters is South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, who earned a mere 8% of the Black vote in his home state in 2016. Other prominent examples are Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, HUD Secretary Ben Carlson, and White House Aide Omarosa Manigault Newman, the latter now having turned on Trump. A notable common trait of these grifters is that they do very little to lift Blacks out of the vicious cycle of poverty, because they assert that racism no longer exists in the US. Even worse, having benefited from Affirmative Action programs and other assistance, they try to deny the same benefits to Blacks and other marginalized groups.
Cane does mention a few Blacks who did not sell out and were thus sidelined by the GOP. Notable examples include Will Hurd, a former Texas Representative & CIA agent, and Michael Steele, 2009-2011 Chair of the Republican Nat'l Committee, who withdrew from his 2011 re-election bid after it became clear that he'd lose.
(3) Book review: Stephanopoulos, George and Lisa Dickey, The Situation Room: The Inside Story of Presidents in Crisis, unabridged 10-hour audiobook, read by the author, Peter Ganim, and Elisabeth Rodgers, Grand Central Publishing, 2024.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This book offers a look at the recent history of the United States, as viewed from the Situation Room (Sit Room) in the White House. The writing is fast-paced and engaging. Stephanopoulos had a ring-side seat at the White House or good access to sources of information for the latter part of this history. He also does a good job in reconstructing the early part of the history, particularly the Iran hostage crisis, which occupied Jimmy Carter for a good part of his presidency.
Other crises covered in the book include the Bay of Pigs fiasco (JFK), catastrophic exit from Vietnam (LBJ), the Iran-Contra affair & attempted assassination (Ronald Reagan), collapse of the Soviet Union (George H. W. Bush), the Watergate affair (Richard Nixon), September 11, 2001, terror attacks (George W. Bush), operation to eliminate Osama bin Laden (Barack Obama), January 6, 2021, insurrection (Donald Trump), and withdrawal from Afghanistan (Joe Biden).
The Sit Room was established in the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs fiasco in order to improve communications and advice-seeking in the White House. Originally, it was a drab, rather boring place, with very limited space and technical capabilities. Over the years, it underwent many modifications, renovations, and expansions, until it featured multiple conference rooms and real-time video feed by the time the operation to eliminate Osama bin Laden took place. As significant renovations took place, relics from the old Sit Room were installed in various presidential libraries.
The Sit Room boasts many non-partisan staffers working under multiple administrations, without whose dedication and expertise the US President would not be able to function effectively.
2024/07/22 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] A primitive culture carved hundreds of large stones in the shape of perfect spheres some 1400 years ago in a remote region of Costa Rica. [Center] Beautiful geometric symmetries. [Right] I support the new likely Democratic presidential candidate: Bracing for racist & misogynistic attacks!
(2) Words of wisdom: Once you hit a certain age, life becomes a delicate balance between staying awake and falling asleep, while slowly getting worse at both.
(3) Bangladesh follows in the footsteps of Iran: Street protests against new discriminatory hiring practices in the public sector have led to hundreds of deaths and Internet service disconnection.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Joe Biden announces an end to his presidential campaign and endorses VP Kamala Harris.
- The Republicans are really scared of Kamala Harris. They plan to ask the courts to invalidate her candidacy.
- China least-impacted by Microsoft/CrowdStrike outage: Little reliance on Microsoft or security software.
- Scientists race to explain the Curiosity Rover's discovery of pure sulfur on the Martian surface.
- Colorful street canopy in Malaga, created by Spanish crochet teacher Eva Pacheco and her students.
(5) After sabotaging several Democratic bills in the Senate and leaving the party, Joe Manchin says he's considering re-registering as a Democrat and running for president.
(6) The statutory retirement age in the US is 66 or 67: That's higher than the age in all but 9 countries. The global median is 61. [Washington Post]
(7) Do Iranians really want to support those shouting "long live the king/prince" or prefer the chants "long live Iran" & "long live the Iranian nation"? Do we want to overthrow one idol & replace him with another one?
(8) Which kind of president do we want: One who quits his re-election bid for the good of the country or one who threatens a civil war if he isn't elected?
2024/07/20 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] The first Moon landing by humans occurred 55 years ago, on July 20, 1969. [Center] The red you see in this image is an illusion: The image is made entirely of blue-green, black, and white. [Right] 70th Anniversary of Boeing 367-80: It came to revolutionize commercial air transport, when its production version entered service as the iconic Boeing 707, America's first jet airliner.
(2) The importance of data longevity and compatibility: NSA has lost access to a 1982 recorded lecture by Grace Hopper, because it is in a format that NSA no longer has the ability to view or digitize. I wrote about such problems in an article published in the 2019 Encyclopedia of Big Data Technologies.
(3) RNC speeches reassured the working class that the GOP cares about them: Yet not one Republican in Congress supports raising the minimum wage and 90% support cuts in social security benefits. [Tweet]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Banks, airlines, and other businesses experience global outages due to a Microsoft Windows update.
- Efforts to make digital accessibility rules part of the Americans with Disabilities Act pick up steam.
- Female law professor dismissed from her university position in Iran via a text message.
- Pat Craig (aka modern-day Noah) is the go-to guy when animals are threatened by neglect or disaster.
- Bob Marley, Saudi style! [Video]
- Poorly-maintained private road within UCSB property, featuring a totally-faded stop sign. [Photos]
(5) Classy: Last night, Donald Trump's acceptance of his nomination at RNC will be preceded by Kid Rock, Hulk Hogan and the chief executive of the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
(6) Contemporary Iranian history: Abbas Milani's exploration (in Persian) of the relationship between the two Pahlavi monarchs, based on 156 letters that the prince wrote to his father. A ChatGPT-produced English translation is also available. [Right] The first Moon landing by humans occurred 55 years ago, on July 20, 1969.
(7) Final thought for the day: I am really disappointed with Joe Biden, whom I have strongly supported. He is behaving as if he is entitled to the nomination rather than think about our country's future.
2024/07/18 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Throwback Thursday: Taxi-meter that was used in Iran some six decades ago. [Center] Math puzzle: What fraction of the square's area is shaded Orange? [Right] Cartoon of the day: When engineers graduate!
(2) Comedian Bob Newhart dead at 94: He had a couple of TV sitcoms and a number of funny routines in which he talked over the phone to another side whom you did not hear or see. Here is an example of Newhart, playing the role of an IBM employee, talking to Herman Hollerith about his punched cards.
(3) Circumventing sanctions: As airlines try to offload their Airbus A340 planes due to their excessive fuel consumption, Iran's IRGC is purchasing them for use by its Mahan Airlines, the largest in Iran, through shell companies it set up throughout the world. Over the past decade, IRGC has purchased 20 wide-body jets, diverting some of them to Syria and Venezuela. The US Treasury Department has apparently turned a blind eye to these violations.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Here is what Republicans really think of Donald Trump (Ted Cruz): Pay no attention to RNC speeches.
- Here is what Republicans really think of Donald Trump (Marco Rubio): Pay no attention to RNC speeches.
- J. D. Vance, Trump's VP pick, several years ago: "Trump could be America's Hitler."
- Let's stop talking about miracles & God's will: Talk about sensible gun laws & a ban on assault rifles instead.
- Facebook memory form July 18, 2016: My Persian quatrains inspired by a Mowlavi (Rumi) poem.
(5) Fact check: Multiple RNC speakers claimed that crime in the US is rising because of illegal immigrants. In reality, US crime rate is declining & immigrants commit fewer crimes than US citizens.
(6) Nikki Haley endorsed the guy who she swore to her donors was unfit & couldn't be trusted. No character! No morals! No courage! She probably expects a cabinet position in return. I really hope she doesn't get it.
(7) On the Republican VP nominee, J. D. Vance: He built his reputation on being from Appalachia, the forgotten area of the US. I read and reviewed his book, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. Now, there is an essay by someone from Appalachia who claims J. D. Vance does not represent him. Black folks don't exist in his narrative. Queer folks don't exist in his narrative. "He is white, Christian, and has longstanding generational ties to the region. I, on the other hand, am south Asian, the child of Indian immigrants who settled in Appalachia in the 1970s, because work in the chemical industry brought them there, and left in the early 2000s, because work disappeared. … My friends with generational ties to Appalachia experienced the book much as I did. They felt misrepresented. Misunderstood. Scapegoated for the result of the 2016 election. Many wrote pieces in direct response. Elizabeth Catte's What You're Getting Wrong About Appalachia is an absolute must-read in this regard."
2024/07/17 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Proud to announce my election as a Fellow of Industry Academy of the Int'l Artificial Intelligence Industry Alliance. [Right] IEEE Central Coast Section talk (see the last item below).
(2) Women's soccer match (USA 0-0 Costa Rica): US dominated both halves of play, including taking 16+ corner kicks, with no goal to show for it. There were plenty of scoring opportunities for the US, but the team just didn't have the scoring instinct to convert the chances to goals. Hope they play better at the Olympics.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Judge Eileen Cannon dismisses the mishandling of classified documents case against Donald Trump.
- Trump's would-be assassin rushed his shots, because a security officer was already on the roof where he was.
- Trump turning his head to point to a sign saved his life: It caused the bullet to hit his ear, not his head.
- Argentina pulls out tough 1-0 overtime victory over Colombia to become Copa America champion.
- Spain beats England 2-1 to claim the 2024 European championship for an unprecedented fourth time.
(4) Friendly women's soccer match: USA played against Costa Rica. Dominating both halves of play, including taking 16+ corner kicks, with no goal to show for their efforts. There were plenty of scoring opportunities for the US, but the team just didn't have the scoring instinct to convert the chances to goals. Hope they play better at the Olympics.
(5) Tonight's IEEE Central Coast Section talk: Dr. Maryam Majedi (UCSB CS) spoke under the title "A Taxonomy for LGBTQIA+ Inclusion in Social Media Platforms."
Within a couple of decades of the Internet becoming public, its use turned from a nicety to a necessity. Being able to participate in Internet exchanges must now be viewed as a right, not a privilege. And with rights come protections. Rising anti-LGBTQIA+ violence in the online environment makes the aforementioned protections vital. Unfortunately, systematic implementation of inclusion across these platforms is a highly understudied subject. Dr. Majedi and co-workers have analyzed a corpus of psychology and computer science literature to identify different dimensions of LGBTQIA+ inclusion, introducing a taxonomy that includes three orthogonal dimensions within a social media ecosystem. Based on the taxonomy, an inclusion map has been constructed which defines the borders of disjoint regions in the continuous inclusion space. The taxonomy has been applied to 14 popular platforms to visualize where each platform lands on this map. The study reveals that only a small fraction of the studied popular platforms is completely inclusive. Most of these platforms lack implementation measures for at least one of the three identified inclusion dimensions. The study highlights areas within each platform that need improvement and allows LGBTQIA+ community members to make informed decisions when choosing platforms.
2024/07/15 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Latest NYT presidential poll: If Kamala Harris becomes a candidate, she will do better than Biden against Trump among women and under-65 voters and a tad worse among senior citizens. A caveat is that Harris has not been in the spotlight in the sense of being tested in debates or subjected to negative attacks. [Center] The 2024 US election will be important for women and seniors, given changes proposed in Project 2025. [Right] "Game of Life" animation (see the next item below).
(2) Conway's "Game of Life" (a cellular automaton): In this 0-player game, the universe is modeled as an infinite 2D grid of square cells, with each cell being alive or dead. A dead cell will come alive in the next time step if it has exactly 3 live neighbors. Otherwise, it will remain dead. A live cell will die of loneliness if it has 0-1 live neighbors. It will die of overcrowding it it has 4-8 live neighbors. Otherwise (with 2 or 3 live neighbors), it will survive through the next time step. The game starts from an initial "seed" distribution of live and dead cells at time 0 and will proceed through "generations" autonomously. Very interesting patterns of life will emerge depending on the grid's initial condition.
A simple introduction to "Game of Life" [6-minute video].
On this page you will find some simple animations. [Wikipedia page]
A few mind-boggling animations [7-minute video].
John Conway reflects on his "Game of Life" [11-minute video].
A related cellular automaton, with prizes for its Rule 30 (don't spend any time on this tough problem).
(3) "Political violence has no place in America": This has been the reaction of many politicians to the assassination attempt against former President Trump. Really? Where have these people been over the past decade, when political violence has been all over our social media and, occasionally, a physical reality?
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- I wish we saw the same outrage and calls for action when shootings occur in classrooms!
- Grieving Ukrainian families learn to cope by climbing in the Alps: Touching story of strength & charity.
- Math oddity: 11 + 2 = 12 + 1. Also "eleven plus two" and "twelve plus one" use exactly the same letters.
- A type of cactus goes extinct in the US owing to sea level rise.
- Persian poetry: A beautiful love couplet from Bidel Shirazi.
[Tweet, with the Persian poem]
- Swedish symphony orchestra brings Siavash Kasrai's poem "Arash-e Kamanguir" to life. [6-minute video]
(5) Abbas Kiarostami's legacy: French actress Juliette Binoche wrote a touching letter to Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami upon his death, lamenting that she was left with unanswered questions about the simple/complex man (who directed her in "Certified Copy") and about his enigmatic country. [A Taste of Kiarostami]
2024/07/13 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Schrodinger's Smiley! [Center] Math puzzle: Find the circle's radius R. [Right] By chance, a NYT photographer captured the image of one of the bullets, as it approached Trump's head.
(2) Special 100th Edition of Caltech's Stargazing Lectures: Caltech Professor and Nobel Laureate Kip Thorne spoke last night under the title "An Odyssey Through the Warped Side of Our Universe." Thorne is the first author, with Lia Halloran, of the book The Warped Side of the Universe.
Rather than trying to summarize the lecture, I recommend that you watch it through the following link to also benefit from a number of interesting diagrams and a couple of video animations.
Interestingly, both of the terms "wormhole" and "black hole" were coined by John Wheeler for concepts discovered by others. Wheeler resisted the idea of a black hole for nearly a decade, before embracing it.
Thorne's lecture begins at the 16-minute mark of this 117-minute video.
(3) In 2016, Donald Trump convinced Americans that he can transfer his skills in running a business in New York to running the US: Now, he is banned from running a business in New York, yet it seems he is making the same claim for 2024!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The shooting suspect & a spectator are killed and Donald Trump is injured at a campaign rally.
- A brief but useful introduction to brain plasticity. [5-minute video]
- World's driest desert blooms in winter (southern hemisphere) due to El Nino.
- Persian music in the pre-Revolution Iran (1962-1979): Shahbal Shabpareh performs a 9-minute medley.
(5) US women national soccer team's friendly match against Mexico: Despite relentless attacks by the US early in the first half, the two teams went into halftime scoreless. Additional US dominance in the second half produced only one goal. The US team should work on converting more of their scoring chances into goals.
(6) Hal Berghel, writing in IEEE Computer magazine (issue of July 2024) on some of the challenges facing our system of higher education: "The reward structure is suboptimal, focusing increasingly on measurements rather than what is being measured, and emphasizing indirect flow from external funding over the intrinsic value of the research being funded. Fifty years ago there was widespread agreement that research funding was an input to a research program. These days, it is often perceived as an end-in-itself. Regrettably, some university administrators take a transactional approach to research funding: if it carries a full indirect rate and isn't illegal, it's good research."
(7) Metamorphic fault tolerance: MFT is a new paradigm for building reliable software systems based on the notions of design diversity and data diversity. More precisely, it addresses one of the trouble spots of the latter two methods which require a way of telling whether a computed result is trustworthy (the oracle problem).
See: Zheng Zheng, Daixu Ren, Huai Liu, and Tsong Yueh Chen, "Metamorphic Fault Tolerance: Addressing the Oracle Problem of Reliability Assurance for Contemporary Software Systems," IEEE Computer, July 2024.
2024/07/12 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Beautiful 5-way symmetry. [Center] Hedges turned into works of art by Tim Bushe in his London neighborhood. [Right] Nahid Pirnazar's Ketab-e Anusi (see the last item below).
(2) A Mowlavi (Rumi) verse that provides comfort through your deepest sorrows: And when you think all roads and passages are closed;
A hidden path, unknown to anyone else, will be revealed
[Tweet, with Persian verse]
(3) Two serious flubs by President Barack Obama (I mean Joe Biden): He referred to Kamala Harris as "Vice-President Trump" and to President Volodymyr Zelensky, standing next to him, as "President Putin"!
(4) Book review: Pirnazar, Nahid (translator & editor), Ketab-e Anusi: The Life of Persian Jews in the Safavid Era, in Persian, Iran Namag Books, 2021.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
There is another book in print, also titled "Ketab-e Anusi," with the subtitle "The Forced Religious Conversion of Jews During the Safavid Dynasty," which is translated/corrected by Amir-Ali Fallahian and published by Ketab Corporation in 2021. Here is the publisher's blurb on the latter book: "The Book of the Anusi is a collection of narrative poems describing the life of Jewish Persians in the mid Safavid dynasty era in the 17th century CE. Reporting on the calamities befalling the Jews in various Persian cities between the years 1607 and 1662 CE, Babai Ben Lotf tells of the difficult years under Shah Abbas I, the more tolerant interlude during Shah Safi and the event of the forced religious conversion of Jews at the time of Shah Abbas II. The narratives, the information and the content offered in this book, are not only important concerning the culture, history and the social life of the Jews of Persia, but also significant when it comes to Persian history at large under the Safavids, the history of religion in Persia, social history, languages and dialects in Persia, local histories as well as the history of Persian literature in general."
Much of the description above is also applicable to Pirnazar's book, which contains poems by Babaee ben-Lotf (Part 1, pp. 43-314) and Babaee ben-Farhad (Part 2, pp. 315-374), with minor additions by Mashiah ben-Rafael (Part 3, pp. 375-381). The three parts cover, respectively, the years 1613-1660 CE, a time interval in the Safavid era, certain events in the period 1666-1736 CE, and events from the Safavid's collapse to the early years of the Afsharids. The book ends with a 13-page Persian glossary, a 10-page Hebrew glossary, and a 9-page index of names.
The three parts of Ketab-e Anusi have always appeared together in a single volume. The book was never published and what we have are about half-dozen handwritten copies held by various museums, cultural organizations, and individual collectors. Dr. Pirnazar has used three of these copies (described on pp. 20-21) in assembling her book.
Historical events that one can glean from Ketab-e Anusi form an important part of Iran's past and the way in which Jews, and by extension, other religious minorities, were treated during the reign of the Safavid kings who wanted to promote Shi'i Islam and were thus rather intolerant of other faiths. We learn from Ketab-e Anusi that Jews lived in many areas of Iran's territory: Abarqu, Ashraf, Damavand, Esfahan, Golpayegan, Hamedan, Kashan, Kermanshah, Khansar, Lar, Lorestan, Nahavand, Natanz, Qom, Qazvin, Shiraz, and Tuyserkan. With regard to jobs and professions, Jews earned a living as Taylors, millers, silk-weavers, goldsmiths, antiques dealers, perfume-makers, pharmacists, medical workers, and musicians.
The book outlines the social standing of Jews, their daily lives, as well as persecutions and molestations they suffered. No one knows exactly how many Jews were forcefully converted to Islam and what the Jewish population would be today, if forced conversions had not occurred. Resisting conversion came with a heavy cost; a number of Jewish leaders were killed for refusing to convert to Islam. A significant portion of the forced converts were Georgian Jews and Christians, who were forcefully relocated to Mazandaran and points further south.
"Anusi" is a Hebrew word meaning "a Jew forced to apostatize but who remains secretly Jewish." The fact that Hebrew has a single word for such a complicated notion tells us that, perhaps, Jews were subjects of forced conversions outside the places and time periods covered by this book. Many of the verses in the book's poems are faulty in rhyme, wording, or meaning. For this reason, Pirnazar urges us to read the book as a historical account, not a literary work. Still, dealing with the imperfect poetry is torturous for someone who is familiar with and adores the works of classical Persian poets.
The book contains many typos. A vast majority of these typos are minor annoyances and do no harm to the reader's understanding. A few are rather serious and hard to decipher. An example of the first category from pp. 19-20 is the two spellings of a name: "Tahmasb-Gholi" and "Tahmas-Gholi." As an example of the second category, a section on page 28 is headed "Events of the Years 5161-1161 CE." The beginning of the section's first sentence, "Georgia in the 16th and 17th centuries" suggests that perhaps 1611-1615 CE was intended, but it takes much more digging to make sure.
2024/07/11 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] Throwback Thursday (1): Ma'soomeh Khakyar went to Iran from Baku and became notorious for the first cinematic kiss in the 1953 Iranian movie "Golnesa." IMDB describes the film thus: "Golnesa is the popular girl of their village and all want to marry her, but she is deceived by a man from the city." After the "illicit" kiss, she was under unbearable pressure from her husband and his family, until she poured gasoline on her beautiful body and set it on fire. She is buried at Tehran's Mesgarabad Cemetery. [Top right] Throwback Thursday (2): Television sets of the mid-20th-century. [Bottom left] Indian math prodigy Ramanujan dreamed up mind-boggling roots-of-roots identities such as these. His identities involving the number pi are equally amazing. [Bottom center] Math challenge: Do we have enough information to derive the perimeter of this shape? [Bottom right] Tonight's Talangor Group meeting (see the last item below).
(2) Cypress Hill made a "Simpsons" joke from 1996 come true last night: The hip-hop group performed with the London Symphony Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall.
(3) Power-hungry data centers: Driven by the use of AI, data centers constitute the fastest-growing segment of the energy market. Data-center operators are working on multiple fronts to reduce their energy needs and to gain access to reliable energy supplies, up to and including building nuclear power plants nearby.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Sharifeh Mohamadi has been sentenced to death in Iran under the bogus charge of "rebellion/revolt."
- Post-hurricane power outage and historic heat a deadly combination in Texas.
- In 75th-anniversary meeting, NATO accuses China of supplying Russia with technology to attack Ukraine.
- A diverse group of older women gymnasts, led by Simone Biles, will represent the US at the Paris Olympics.
- Calendar math puzzle: What is the sum of the roots of (1/2 - x)^45 + x^45 = 0?
(5) Tonight's Talangor Group meeting: Dr. Heidar (Hamid) Azodanloo (lecturer of comparative literature at U. Minnesota) spoke on "History and Historical Awareness." Before the main talk, yours truly gave a brief presentation under the title "The Third Industrial Revolution: The Internet of Energy," which entails the worldwide harnessing, storage, and distribution of energy obtained from renewable sources.
History isn't a static set of facts or data points. Who tells the story affects the content (hence, for example, the large number of books on Iran's Constitutional Revolution) and the reader's interpretation also plays a part. The story-teller imposes his/her own views or interpretations on the story s/he tells and the reader sees the story in the context of today's traditions and knowledge. All of these change over time. The same historical event, as told 100 years ago, is different from its telling today. And language plays a big part in all these processes. Nothing we think or say emerges without going through the filter of language.
2024/07/10 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Selfie with Dr. Hamed Ghoddusi (see the next item below). [Center] My first cars (see the last item below). [Right] The house where I lived 54 years ago (see the next to the last item below).
(2) Meeting a colleague and fellow-Iranian: Professor Hamed Ghoddusi of Cal Poly SLO College of Business paid a visit to UCSB on Tuesday 7/09, during which we had a productive chat. Our conversation introduced me to the Shapley–Shubik power index in weighted voting systems of the kind used, for example, in corporate decision-making (where stock holdings determine the weights) and in the UN Security Council (where weights are based on a country's status as permanent or non-permanent member). Fascinating stuff that help my research and teaching on voting algorithms.
(3) Emergence of self-replicating digital life: "A self-replicating form of artificial life has arisen from a digital 'primordial soup' of random data, despite a lack of explicit rules or goals to encourage such behaviour. Researchers believe it is possible that more sophisticated versions of the experiment could yield more advanced digital organisms, and if they did, the findings could shed light on the mechanisms behind the emergence of biological life on Earth."
(4) Iran's shadow government: Operating under the Supreme Leader, the shadow government has a shadow president and shadow ministers that must approve every decision.
(5) Free Iranian cultural program in Beverly Hills: Sunday, July 21, 2024, Beverly Gardens Park, 9439 Santa Monica Blvd. Includes Persian food truck. Sponsored by Farhang Foundation.
(6) My first two cars (early 1970s): A couple of months after arriving at UCLA in 1970, I decided to buy a car, because it was impossible to get around without one. I bought a brown Oldsmobile Delta-88 V8 gas guzzler for $200 (quite a sum for my budget)! It ran well and had a lot of power, but luxury Detroit cars had very low resale value. When I had a bit more money due to my income as a research assistant a couple of years later, I upgraded to a metallic blue Ford Mustang convertible, which I bought for about $700. It looked good on the outside, but nothing in it worked: The top could not be retracted, except manually with a lot of effort; power windows wouldn't roll up or down. I suspected the person who sold it to me to be a gang member or drug dealer. The photos aren't of the actual cars but Internet photos that I have picked to be similar to my cars.
(7) Memories of my arrival at UCLA in 1970: For a few months 54 years ago, I lived at a boarding house near the UCLA campus. In exchange for a discounted rate, which was all I could afford at the time, we helped with cleaning, meal service, and dishwashing. when I visited UCLA in mid-June to attend a graduation ceremony, I took this photo in front of the house which I believe was the location of the boarding house.
2024/07/08 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Reality check for those who thought Iran's various presidential candidates were different: Pezeshkian declares his commitment to Hezbollah and other factions of "the Resistance Front." [Center] The fate of Iran's past presidents: They are all dead or sidelined, unable to speak their minds, the only exception being Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader. Presidents in Iran are discarded like soiled bathroom tissue. [Right] Project 2025 is a blueprint for the second Trump administration: Prepared by the Heritage Foundation, it guts multiple government programs and rolls back many social advances of the past few decades.
(2) What we all suspected is officially confirmed: Anti-Israeli protests in the US were informationally, logistically, and financially supported by Iran's Islamist government.
(3) "Only the Lord Almighty could convince [me] to step aside." ~ Joe Biden
Wrong answer! It's not about you, Joe! You should have said something to the effect that you are bent on the Democrats winning the White House in 2024 and that if you perceive that your candidacy jeopardizes this goal, you'd happily step aside.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- New York Times calls for Biden to drop out. But so far, no call for the felon to drop out!
- Columbia U. removes tree deans because their text-message exchanges contained anti-Semitic tropes.
- Lehigh U. student who won a full scholarship with fake documents and a ChatGPT-written essay is expelled.
- Iran's so-called "Reformist" President reassures Russia and Hezbollah of Iran's continued support.
- Erdos-Straus conjecture: For any integer n > 1 there are positive integers x,y,z such that: 4/n=1/x+1/y+1/z
- Facebook memory from July 8, 2019: Kissing the ruler's hand is in conflict with democracy.
(5) Oops, they did it again: StorageReview engineers set a new world record by calculating pi to more than 202 trillion digits using dual Intel Xeon 8592+ CPUs and 28 Solidigm P5336 61.44TB NVMe SSDs. Their previous record of 105 trillion digits was set earlier this year using a dual processor 128-core AMD EPYC 9754 Bergamo system with 1.5TB of DRAM and almost a petabyte of Solidigm QLC SSDs.
(6) Emergence of self-replicating digital life: "A self-replicating form of artificial life has arisen from a digital 'primordial soup' of random data, despite a lack of explicit rules or goals to encourage such behaviour. Researchers believe it is possible that more sophisticated versions of the experiment could yield more advanced digital organisms, and if they did, the findings could shed light on the mechanisms behind the emergence of biological life on Earth."
(7) Princeton University should fire Hossein Mousavian: He was linked by the German government to an assassination squad that killed four Iranian dissidents in Berlin's Mykonos Restaurant, Mafia-style, when he was Iran's Ambassador in Bonn.
2024/07/07 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Our Fourth of July Weekend BBQ at my sister's, combined with belated birthday celebration for her daughter. [Center] Math puzzle: Determine the areas A, B, and C of the three triangles. [Right] NYC has turned into the world headquarters of observation decks and summer dresses (NYT photos).
(2) Iran's election result: Masoud Pezeshkian becomes Iran's new president with 16.3 million votes to Saeed Jalili's 13.5 million votes. Voter participation was announced as 49.6%. These numbers are highly suspicious, as they come from the government, with no internationally recognized election monitors.
(3) Not one photo or video has been published by Iran's Islamic regime to show crowds of voters at the precincts consistent with the 30 million (49.6%) turnout. The turnout for the first round of voting is widely believed to have been 13.3%. The second round's turnout is estimated to be ~10%. Iran allows no international observers for its elections. Government officials run the polls and report the results.
(4) Talk about apartheid! In Islamic Iran, multiple classes of people are defined, each class with a different set of rights. In addition to gender apartheid, there is religious apartheid (Muslim vs. non-Muslim; Shi'i vs. Sunni; people of the book vs. those with no book), and clergy vs. laymen. The clergy even have their separate courts and system of justice.
(5) Another analysis of Iran's election data: Dividing the total number of votes cast by the claimed participation ratio should give you the number of eligible voters. This latter number rose substantially in the week between the election and the run-off. Another clear indication of fraud. [Tweet, withy video]
(6) Iran's new president faces reality: His announced news conference with domestic & foreign reporters was cancelled on orders from the Supreme Leader. One of his strongest advocates, a professor & lawyer, was arrested. And he claims he never promised to remove the filtering of the Internet. Who's the boss?
(7) Iran's Islamic regime survives because even though most Iranians live in poverty and face economic hardships, those who prop up the brutal dictatorship live in 10,000-square-foot luxury penthouses. [Video]
(8) Final thought for the day: If one person says it's raining, and the other says the sun is shining, it's not the media's job to quote them both. It's their job to look out the window and report the truth.
2024/07/05 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Ditch the Ten Commandments: Post these Ten Commitments in schools instead. [Center] Cartoon of the day: The conservative majority of the new US Supreme Court. [Right] Not-so-subtle message to the White House occupant.
(2) America celebrated its independence from the British Empire yesterday: Algeria does it today. Dozens of other countries that have seceded from the British Empire celebrate the event on various dates.
(3) Islamic Iran's extreme apartheid recognizes seven classes of people, each with a different set of rights: From lowly voters at the bottom to male Shi'i Muslim clerics owning the highest positions of power. Vote if you want but know that your vote is a tool of power for the top class.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- At Germany's request, EU begins the process of designating Iran's IRGC as a terrorist group.
- German scientists have seen ants bite off others' legs to prevent the spread of infections from open wounds.
- Science humor: Is Iron-man the same as Fe-male?
- I had forgotten how wonderful Jose Feliciano sounded on the acoustic guitar. Enjoy!
[5-minute video]
(5) Iran's former FM Javad Zarif sounds different these days: Gone are his unapologetic desire for meddling in the affairs of Iraq, Syria, & Lebanon and his pride in being under pressure for supporting Palestine.
(6) Greece has chosen to go against the trend: Many countries are considering shortening the work week to 4 days, which research shows benefits productivity and improves employee well-being. Greece is lengthening the work week to 6 days to boost national productivity and give workers additional overtime pay.
(7) Academic freedom can quickly disappear just like any other freedom: "Academics researching online misinformation in the US are learning a hard lesson: Academic freedom cannot be taken for granted. They face a concerted effort—including by members of Congress—to undermine or silence their work documenting false and misleading internet content. The claim is that online misinformation researchers are trying to silence conservative voices. The evidence suggests just the opposite."
(8) Final thought for the day: I hope Joe Biden does not commit the same mistake as Ruth Ginsberg. She refused to retire until it was too late and we lost one Supreme Court seat. A 5-4 conservative majority would have been a lot better than the current 6-3 supermajority.
2024/07/04 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Happy birthday to America! Dark clouds cover our country this July 4th. But we will replace these dark clouds with bright, sunny skies soon. We have done it before and we will do it again! [Top center & right] Throwback Thursday: Georgia "Tiny" Broadwick was the first woman to parachute from an airplane. To perform this feat, she hung from a trapeze-like swing suspended beneath the airplane just behind the wing. [Bottom left] Book introduction: This book presents a diverse group of mathematicians, including Donald G. Saari, whom I got to know through his research on social choice, but he has very broad interests. [Bottom center] Range of accurate weather forecasts in the US: Seven days out in southern Florida, 4-5 days out in the Southwest region, 3-4 days out in coastal areas, and no more than 2 days out in the central plains. [Bottom right] A curious engineer's musings on the tail-lights of modern cars (see the next item below).
(2) Musings of a curious engineer: Lately, I have been paying attention to tail-lights on cars and noticed that you can divide them into two categories. One category is when the tail-light extends onto the trunk lid; another when the tail-light ends before the trunk lid begins. Based on my small sample, the former category is more common. Why is this important? When the tail-light extends onto the trunk lid, a separate set of wires must be included to direct power to that section of the tail-light. So, car design engineers should be motivated to avoid this situation in order to minimize the production cost. There is also the issue of reliability due to cables connecting to a moving trunk lid. Of course, aesthetics and ease of access to the trunk are quite important as well. Pay attention to different car models and decide which kind of tail-light looks better.
(3) Facebook memory from July 4, 2023: Happy 4th to everyone not pleading the 5th about the 6th!
(4) Facebook memory from July 4, 2022: Observing America's birthday is an excellent occasion for reflecting on our relationship with the original owners of this land.
(5) Facebook memory from July 4, 2010: My Persian poem advocating unity & equality (inspired by Jack Johnson's story and what the phrase "the great white hope" signified).
(6) Greece has chosen to go against the trend: Many countries are considering shortening the work week to 4 days, which research shows benefits productivity and improves employee well-being. Greece is lengthening the work week to 6 days to boost national productivity and give workers additional overtime pay.
(7)Trump's lies and racist/xenophobic comments during the first presidential debate were overshadowed by Biden's miserable performance: During the debate, Trump referred to Biden as a Palestinian (evidently, he considers "Palestinian" a pejorative term). He then said on the very next day, "Look at a guy like Senator Schumer. I've always known him, known him a long time. I come from New York; I knew Schumer. He's become a Palestinian. He's a Palestinian now. Congratulations. He was very loyal to Israel and to Jewish people. He's Jewish. But he's become a Palestinian because they have a couple of more votes or something; nobody's quite figured it out." Again we see the use of "Palestinian" as a pejorative, along with the anti-Semitic trope: If Schumer criticizes the Israeli government, he is a scheming Jew or he must have been bought off.
2024/07/03 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] New robe design for the US Supreme Court. [Center] Math puzzle: Find the radius r of the semicircle inside the square. [Right] Socrates Think Tank talk (see the last item below).
(2) Wonders of number theory: For m no less than 25, there exists at least one prime number between m and 6m/5 (Theorem due to Nagura). Then, because the 26th prime is 101 and (1.2)^26 ~ 114.48, we can show by induction on n that the nth prime is less than (1.2)^n.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Peaceful transfer of power in the Netherlands: Outgoing PM delivers the reigns of power and bikes home.
- California's $300 billion 2024-2025 budget includes significant cuts for UC and Cal State.
- Californians are warned about a dangerous heat wave in the week ahead.
- A heat wave is coming our way this weekend: Stay in the shade and hydrated. [Tweet, with chart]
(4) Tonight's Socrates Think Tank talk: Dr. Mahmoud Sabahi spoke under the title "From Jaber ibn Hayyan's Alchemy to Today's Chemistry and Super-Challenges Ahead." There were ~105 attendees.
Alchemy, from the Greek root "khemia" ("kimia" in Persian), was a cult "science" with the goal of converting base metals into gold or to find a universal elixir. Works attributed to the Father of Chemistry Jabir ibn Hayyan, which are tentatively dated to 850-950 CE, contain the oldest known systematic classification of chemical substances, and the oldest known instructions for deriving an inorganic compound, ammonium chloride, from organic substances, such as plants, blood, and hair, by chemical means.
Chemistry entered a new phase when chemists succeeded in producing hydrogen (which appears in nature only as compounds). This was followed by the production of ammonia, which has many applications (e.g., in agriculture). By the mid-20th-century, the US chemical industry created R&D labs in large numbers to exploit the practical benefits of new scientific discoveries. By 2013, the total value of the chemical industry reached $3.5 trillion, and continued to grow exponentially in the decade since.
Waste generation and pollution are the main challenges facing the chemical industry. In her 1962 book 'Silent Spring,' Rachel Carson brought attention to these problems. By 1990, a paradigm shift to "green chemistry" occurred, which advocated prevention rather than treatment of harmful waste. More recently, certain long-lasting chemicals, which do not deteriorate and thus find their way into our food supply and bodies, creating many health problems, have found widespread applications, from non-stick cookware to water-repellent & stain-resistant clothing.
In conclusion, Dr. Sabahi recommended a number of references to follow up on the topics discussed. The article "The Lawyer who became DuPont's Worst Nightmare," profiles Rob Bilott, who exposed a brazen, decades-long history of chemical pollution. The 2019 movie "Dark Waters" covers the same story. California is leading the way in regulating harmful chemicals (see, e.g., California PFAS Drinking Water Advisories). Finally, the 2006 NRC Report "Sustainability in the Chemical Industry: Grand Challenges and Research Needs" charts the industry's path ahead.
2024/07/02 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Would you dare climb these stairs? The 54 steps of the Norman staircase are carved into the rock of one of the mountain towers that overlook the ancient village of Castelmezzano, in the Lucanian Dolomites. The dizzying lookout point tells the story of conquests and battles that occurred more than 1000 years ago. [Center] Witch's stairs: So-named, because they were thought to confuse witches and thus protect occupants from them. Their design allows steeper inclines in houses with too little space for ordinary staircases. You can see them in very old New England homes. [Right] World's tallest tree: Hyperion, a coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) in California's Redwood National Park, is the world's tallest known living tree at 380.3 ft (115.92 m) tall. It's even taller than the Statue of Liberty.
(2) An amazing math trick: Ask an opponent to choose a polynomial p(x) of any degree with nonnegative integer coefficients. Tell them you can determine what it is with just two values: You choose a and ask for p(a), then choose b and ask for p(b). What is a winning strategy?
(3) Serious cybersecurity warning: The United States, Canada, and Australia warn that 52% of 172 open-source projects studies contained code written in a memory-unsafe language.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- At least 27 people were killed in a stampede during a religious event in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.
- The US Men's National Soccer Team eliminated from COPA America after 0-1 group-stage loss to Uruguay.
- The sick world of teenage influencers: Who is she influencing when 92% of her followers are adult men?
- The Rubik's Cube turns 50: It is still as tough as ever to solve.
- Bringing Back Our Wetland: 68-minute documentary film produced by UCSB Cheadle Center.
(5) Million-dollar prize for AI to solve puzzles that humans find easy: Deducing the correct pattern that links pairs of colored grids relies on skills that AI models lack at present. Google's new $1 million prize will encourage the development of an AI that can solve such puzzles.
(6) Short list of five books for "UCSB Reads 2025" Program announcedby by UCSB Library:
- The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet (2021) by John Green
- The Book of Delights: Essays (2019) by Ross Gay
- The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of US History (2023) by Ned Blackhawk
- Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (2022) by Gabrielle Zevin
- Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality (2024) by Venki Ramakrishnan
(7) Letters from the former Shah of Iran to his father: Dr. Abbas Milani has gained access to 104 letters that the late Shah wrote to his father, who had instructed him to report on his condition and his academic progress weekly, while studying in Switzerland. Milani discusses these letters in this 13-minute video.
2024/07/01 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Expressive fonts. [Center] Possible fraud in Iran's presidential election (see the next item below). [Right] Hugh Prather's Notes to Myself (see the last item below).
(2) Data detectives:There are methods for detecting fakery in data sets, the best-known of which is based on Benford's Law about distribution of digit values in large data sets. Today, the X (Twitter) platform is abuzz with an anomaly in Iran's reported election data. The numbers of votes for all four candidates, as well as the total number of votes and the number of invalid ballots are all multiples of 3. Given that the total number of votes isn't independent of the other five figures, the chance of this happening at random is (1/3)^5 or 0.4%, so there is speculation that election officials, under orders from higher-ups, have inflated the numbers by a factor of 3, to portray a 13.3% turnout as a 39.9% turnout. Even the inflated figure is an all-time low (it was 49% in the 2021 election, itself lowest up to that point). Users are also posting video clips of Supreme Leader Khamenei stating in 2001 that the 40% voter turnout in certain Western countries is a disgrace. [This post, in Persian]
(3) Remember that your vote isn't just for Biden vs. Trump: It is for Biden administration of competent progressives, vs. Trump administration of backward religious zealots who will roll back decades of gains in women's and minority rights.
(4) My disgust with some Iranian opposition groups: The X (Twitter) platform is filled with videos of Iranians verbally assaulting those who went to cast their ballots at IRI embassies, using the vilest language (sample). We are free to express our views or to boycott the show election, but should not verbally abuse or force others to act against their will, regardless of their beliefs or motivation. (I apologize for the language in this posted video, but wanted to give a representative example). [This post, in Persian]
(5) Book review: Prather, Hugh, Notes to Myself: My Struggle to Become a Person, unabridged 2-hour audiobook, read by Sean Patrick Hopkins, Random House Audio, 2021.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
In exploring his own life in this book, first published in 1970, writer/editor Hugh Prather [1938-2010] helps the reader examine his/her own. Prather's aphorisms include "perfectionism is slow death" and "this anxiety running through my life is the tension between what I should be and what I am." Being grateful for who we are and what we have is a common theme in Prather's musings: "Another day to listen and love and walk and glory. I am here for another day. I think of those who aren't."
New York Times once opined: "Some of Mr. Prather's experiences come from having had seven 'parents,' including a drug addict, two alcoholics, an institutionalized mentally ill patient, a convicted murderer [one of his father's wives] and a convicted embezzler [one of his mother's husbands]." Prather confesses that adhering to the advice he dispenses is difficult, even for him. There are always exceptions!
Notes to Myself was not intended as a commercial book. It began as Prather's private musings on the nature of life, death, love, sex, and much else. After the immense success of his first book, Prather wrote several other self-help books, including two books for couples (co-authored by his wife, Gayle Halligan Prather): Notes to Each Other and Spiritual Parenting.
Comedy writer Jack Handy spoofed Notes to Myself in his public musings known as "Deep Thoughts," which became a recurring feature on the comedy show "Saturday Night Live" in the 1990s and was also released as a series of books.
2024/06/30 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Hearty Iranian breakfast for three. [Center] A mechanical analog computer (see the next item below). [Right] Sohrab Ahmari's Tyranny, Inc. (see the last item below).
(2) Mechanical analog computer from 1872 that predicted ocean tides: William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) became rich from a patent for laying undersea telegraph cables, so he decided to buy a yacht as a summer home, where he hosted scientific parties. Based on his extensive observations and by applying harmonic analysis to tidal phenomena, he designed a device which traced the tidal curve for a given location. Mechanical tide-predicting machines remained in use until the 1950s, when they were replaced by digital computers.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The choice is yours: The man who speaks the truth with some difficulty or the man who lies with ease.
- Good summation of the first US presidential debate and the Biden-vs.-Trump choice: It isn't even close!
- An introductory course on programming should be called "Programming 1100101," not "Programming 101"!
- My KIRN Radio Iran program on "Women in Science and Engineering" will be rebroadcast today at 6:00 PM.
(4) Iranian presidential election: Eligible voters ~61.5 million; Votes ~24 million (if you believe the regime); Turnout ~39% (This is a marked drop from the 49% turnout in 2021, which itself was a low up to that point). There will be a run-off between Masoud Pezeshkian (42.5% of the vote) and Saeed Jalili (38.6%).
(5) Book review: Ahmari, Sohrab, Tyranny, Inc.: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty—and What to Do About It, unabridged 8-hour audiobook, read by the author, Random House Audio, 2023.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Unchecked corporate power is being criticized both from the left and from the right, with members on one side of the spectrum occasionally even endorsing or praising ideas from the other side. Ahmari, a conservative, dedicates his book to "Adrian, Chad, Gladden, and Patrick"; first names of a group that were co-founders of the Substack newsletter Postliberal Order. Shoshana Zuboff, a decidedly liberal author and professor, had previously written The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (my review) on the horrors of illicit corporate power gained through amassing users' private information.
According to Ahmari, unchecked corporate power hurts both employees (e.g., through so-called flexible contracts and mandatory arbitration agreements) and consumers (privatization of vital emergency services, local newspapers going under, the rich-friendly bankruptcy law that allowed Purdue Pharma to escape liability for the opioid crisis). These are important concerns for our society, whether you consider them populist or conservative musings.
Ahmari's ideas are more FDR than Ronald Reagan, more Ruth Bader Ginsburg than SCOTUS's conservative opinion approving of arbitration clauses, more Elizabeth Warren than Paul Ryan, more an Amazon whistle-blower than corporate lawyers defending Amazon's miserable COVID response. For the ills he enumerates, Ahmari places the blame on the economic liberalism of the right and the social liberalism of the left. One remedy is to restore workers' rights, that are gradually disappearing, through the establish
2024/06/29 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] To make sense of this image, hold it nearly horizontally and look at it from the bottom edge. [Center] Yes, Biden's 3.5-year record as President is more important than his performance in a 90-minute debate. But we live in the age of soundbites. Biden must show his decency by stepping aside & letting someone else confront Trump's lies & vitriol with words that Americans understand. P.S.: Trump's many debate lies were fact-checked live on CNN. [Right] Reclaiming Our Democracy (see the last item below).
(2) What kind of debate prep team does Biden have? Why don't they prep him to answer with short, clear statements, rather than long-winded sentences, in the middle of which he gets lost?
(3) First, Louisiana makes posting of the Ten Commandments mandatory in classrooms. Now, Oklahoma requires public schools to teach the Bible. And these are 40th- and 43rd-ranked states in terms of K-12 education, according to US News & World Report!
(4) California Public Utilities Commission rejects a petition by AT&T to cut off millions of Californians from their landline phone service: AARP on behalf of its senior-citizen members, who depend on landlines, successfully lobbied for the rejection. AT&T will go to the CA State Legislature next, in an effort to overturn the rejection.
(5) Book review: Daley-Harris, Sam, Reclaiming Our Democracy: Every Citizen's Guide to Transformational Advocacy, unabridged 11-hour audiobook, read by author, Rivertowns Books, revised & updated edition, 2024.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This is a detailed account of citizen activism by Sam Daley-Harris, who founded RESULTS (originally an acronym for Responsibility for Ending Starvation Using Legislation, Trimtabbing, and Support) in 1980 to facilitate citizen advocacy by training the participants in methods of influencing politicians and journalists, editorial writers, in particular. Trimtabbing is a reference to trim tabs, the small surfaces that allow boat or aircraft pilots to control larger control surfaces like rudders or elevators and which were popularized as a metaphor for individual empowerment by Buckminster Fuller in a 1972 interview.
This 20th-anniversary edition has a new chapter on Citizens Climate Lobby, a powerful new advocacy group following the RESULTS model, and another new chapter on Center for Citizen Empowerment and Transformation, which is focused on spreading the original concepts developed by RESULTS to help reduce malnutrition and preventable disease with what Daley-Harris calls "transformational advocacy" based on three pillars: An organizational structure supporting volunteers with a clarity of purpose and high expectations; A disciplined outreach plan that produces letters to elected officials & editorials to newspapers, while also cultivating close personal relationships with politicians & journalists; The empowering value of idealism.
The account is a bit too drawn out and, at times, repetitive, but the message is something that every American should hear. The ideas described are universal and useful to world citizens, but much of the specific suggestions and action strategies may not apply outside the US.
A conversation with Sam Daley-Harris in this 26-minute video provides a good overview of the key ideas.
2024/06/28 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Right] Ellwood Marine Terminal Restoration Project (see the next item below). [Center] Talangor Group program on elections and history of Islamic seminaries (see the last item below).
(2) Ellwood Marine Terminal Restoration Project: Yesterday, I went on an informative 2.5-hour tour, organized by UCSB's Cheadle Center for Biodiversity & Ecological Restoration. The two oil storage reservoirs, seen at a distance from UCSB North Campus Open Space Visitor Center in one of the photos, will be demolished beginning in October 2024, and the large parcel of land connecting the Open Space to the Pacific Ocean will be reconfigured, restored, and landscaped to its original state before oil exploration in the area began. The reservoirs were used for many years to store oil coming from Platform Holly, with tanker trucks transporting it to various destinations. Representatives from Chumash People have been given front-row seats in the planning and restoration processes. [Project Web site]
The two oil storage reservoirs and a smaller water reservoir, used for firefighting, will be demolished, all electric wires & poles will be removed, and trails & visitor amenities will be built for the local community to enjoy the area's breathtaking views. Trails will become open to the public shortly after the demolition work this fall, as the multi-year restoration work proceeds in parallel. The vicinity of the Marine Terminal is one of my favorite areas for walking, so, I'm excited about the restoration work. [2-minute video]
(3) Today is 2*pi Day (2 * 3.14 = 6.28), aka tau day: According to some, tau is a more-important constant than pi. Mathematician Michael Hartl liked tau so much better than pi that he wrote the Tau Manifesto.
(4) Last night's Talangor Group program: Dr. Mostafa Daneshgar Rahbar (Assistant Professor of Intelligent Systems, Lawrence Technological U.) spoke under the title "History of Islamic Seminaries." Dr. Daneshgar Rahbar has a PhD in engineering, but he was also concurrently educated at a seminary, although the latter background is not reflected on his LinkedIn profile. There were ~65 attendees.
Prior to the main talk, there was open discussion on the concurrently-unfolding first US presidential debate and on Iran's presidential election, scheduled for the following day.
Dr. Daneshgar Rahbar began by clarifying that his talk's focus will be on Shiite Islamic seminaries, geographically distributed, for the most part, in Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon.
The history of Islamic seminaries spans a timeline that began with Shi'i Imams and continued with a few key personalities, once the 12th Imam purportedly went into hiding. The appearance of Islamic seminaries was part of the institutionalization of Shiite Islam, which took hold at the time of the 6th Shi'i Imam, Ja'far Sadeq.
Subjects taught at these seminaries include faith & reason, God & the universe, interpretation of Quran, teachings/traditions of the Prophet & Imams, prophecy, ethics, and religious/theological language. The seminaries are intimately tied to the notion of marja'-e taqlid (religious authority who should be imitated or followed) and operate within an extremely opaque financial system.
Some seminaries are local, whereas others are large institutions that train and "export" clerics to locations worldwide. Najaf seminary is a good example of such large, prestigious institutions. Iran's Qom Seminary is influential politically, but not necessarily from a religious standpoint.
Islamic seminaries that thrive are typically located next to important religious shrines. For example, Najaf is where Imam Ali is buried, Mashhad houses the tomb of Imam Reza, and Qom is the burial place of Hazrat-e Ma'soumeh.
The Najaf Seminary was for a long time the center of gravity for Shi'i Islam and housed & produced the most-respected Shiite leaders. There are many other centers of learning for Shi'i clerics, but Najaf can be likened to the MIT of Islamic seminaries. Iran's rulers tried to reduce Najaf's influence, but they did not succeed.
Searching the Internet for possible additional sources of information, I came across a 22-page article from 2021, entitled "Islamic Seminaries: A Brief Historical Survey."
2024/06/27 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Throwback Thursday (1): This family-run bookshop in Tehran has been operating for 150 years, since the Qajar era. [Center] Throwback Thursday(2): Ghahveh-khaneh (literally, "coffee house") was a fixture of Iran's society, before it was replaced in many instances by modern cafes and restaurants. They actually didn't serve coffee, but tea, plus a limited number of snacks and meals, the most-prominent among them being abgoosht ("meat stew"). [Right] Socrates Think Tank talk (see the last item below).
(2) SpaceX earns $843 million NASA contract to build a vehicle to remove the International Space Station from its orbit when its useful life ends in a few years.
(3) The sad state of open-access publishing: Publishers being paid for every article they publish is a recipe for disaster, as they have no incentive to reject fraudulent or marginal papers. Yet, we can't really go back to the undemocratic, closed-access model. Reforming the system is our only option.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The presidential debate was pure torture. Biden had trouble enunciating words. Trump spoke too many lies.
- Israel's Supreme Court rules that Orthodox Jews, now exempt from military service, can be drafted to serve.
- Marching backwards: Infant mortality rate has ticked up in Texas following the state's abortion ban.
- With 500,000 unresolved fraud cases, identity theft overwhelms the US Internal Revenue Service.
- Two French teenagers, a forward and a center, are NBA's top draft picks.
- This woman in Shiraz, Iran, operates a mobile bookstore which she moves around on a bike.
- Patience is a superpower: 17-minute TEDx talk by Oliver Burkeman.
- Copa America: Panama defeats USA 2-1, making it tough for the US to advance from the group stage.
(5) Sickening: "If you want to be free to go out without your hijab, then aroused young men should be free to rape you." ~ Representative of Iran's presidential candidate who's closest to the Supreme Leader
(6) Last night's Socrates Think Tank talk: Saleheh Ebadirad (Sally Rad), a PhD candidate in biochemistry and astrobiology at UC Riverside, spoke under the title "Tree of Life."
Dr. Ebadirad began by presenting quite a few tree diagrams drawn by scientists at various junctures, each one showing the branching of the species on Earth, with the trees getting more sophisticated over time. She then discussed the various theories about the origins of life on Earth, including proteins hitching rides on asteroids. She showed a diagram that represented the proliferation and extinction of life forms, including the Cambrian explosion which happened around 530 million years ago and six extinction events, the last one of which is now in progress. She concluded her talk by speculating on the future development of the tree of life.
2024/06/26 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Math puzzlers: Find areas of the yellow triangles on the left & right and ratio of the radii in the middle.
(2) The presidential election circus in Iran: Only 3 days left to polling on June 28. All candidates have distanced themselves from harsh treatment of women on the streets for ignoring hijab laws. But this is par for the course. For decades, enforcement of hijab laws would wane as polling neared, only to pick up with greater intensity after the election. Iranian women are smarter than to fall for promises from someone, who, like all other Iranian presidents, will be a powerless figurehead who must defer to edicts of the Supreme Leader and his Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
(3) Students way ahead of their professors in embracing AI: Half of the students surveyed indicated that AI has helped them attain better grades. Two out of five faculty members are familiar with AI, but only 14 percent said they are confident in their ability to use AI in their teaching.
(4) To people of Iranian heritage who support Trump: He says clearly that he will make a deal with Iran's Islamic regime (no change of leadership), because of the country's huge economic potential.
(5) World initiative on curbing hate speech and mis/disinformation: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres releases global principles that call on tech companies, advertisers, media, and other organizations to avoid using, supporting, or amplifying hate speech and mis/disinformation.
We can dismiss this effort as just another grandiose UN report that will sit on shelves, gathering dust. But, even though the UN lacks enforcement power to implement these recommendations, defining the problem and its dimensions is a useful start.
(6) Digital price-labels and dynamic pricing: Leading retailers are switching from printed price-labels on store shelves to digital displays. With digital labels, they will save money and also be able to adjust prices dynamically, perhaps several times per hour.
Dynamic pricing is totally consistent with the principle of supply-and-demand in a free-market economy. Yet, I find its use for basic commodities quite jarring. When you see a price on the store shelf, will you end up paying a different amount at check-out? Whereas with on-line shopping you can wait for an unreasonably high price to drop before you buy, you don't have the same option when shopping at a store.
We humans crave stability. Micro-level dynamic pricing feels like someone pulling the rug from under our feet. Already, prices fluctuate wildly at supermarkets: A 12-pack of soda can cost $7.99 one day, $5.99 the next day with a digital coupon, and $9.99 another day, with a buy-one-get-one-free deal. Dynamic pricing will only add to the existing chaos.
2024/06/24 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Sensible advice from your librarian. [Center] Home decor idea: Tree of knowledge. [Right] Michio Kaku's Hyperspace (see the last item below).
(2) Coordinated terrorist attacks in Russia: Gunmen attacked a synagogue, a church, and a police station, killing at least two dozen people (15 of them policemen). [Washington Post]
(3) Human rights are universal, not relative: Flogging, cutting of hands, and stoning, even if they were part of the Iranian culture, which they are not, are inhumane. Charlatan Javad Zarif tries to justify Iran's compulsory hijab laws by claiming that every country has a dress code. When was the last time you saw US or European security forces drag a woman into a police van for violating the dress code? [Tweet, in Persian, with video]
(4) A part of Iran's influence campaign in the West: Javad Zarif led a campaign, aided by lobbyists of Iran's Islamist regime and paid "journalists," to portray General Qassem Soleimani a national hero and a terrorism fighter, instead of the criminal mass-murderer that he was. [Tweet, in Persian, with video]
(5) Book review: Kaku, Michio, Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the 10th Dimension, unabridged 14-hour audiobook, read by Tim Lounibos, Highbridge Audio, 2023.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku is a prolific writer. I have read several of his books, but Hyperspace impressed me the most in terms of content and presentation. Ever since Einstein, physicists have been obsessed with building a bridge between relativity and quantum theory, in order to synthesize a unifying theory, the so-called "theory of everything," that is applicable both at the scale of planets & galaxies and at the microcosmic world of subatomic particles.
Speculations about more dimensions, beyond the familiar three for space and one for time, have existed for decades, both in the scientific community and among sci-fi writers. Kaku reviews these dimensions up to 10 (that an 11th dimension would make the model most-stable, became known after this book had been written) and asserts that superstring theory dealing with these extra dimensions is the best approximation yet to the sought-after unified theory.
According to superstring theory, dimensions beyond the fourth are curled up at a microscopic level, thus making them imperceptible to us humans. We only perceive the four "big" dimensions. The imperceptibility of other dimensions can be likened to a 2-dimentional being, as postulated in Edwin A. Abbott's classic novella Flatland (my review), being totally unaware of the third space dimension.
Superstring theory posits that there are no elementary particles (like electrons or quarks). We have nothing but pieces of vibrating strings. Each vibration mode corresponds to a different particle and determines its charge and its mass. In the current understanding of the theory, those strings are not "made of" anything: they are the fundamental constituent of matter.
Superstring theory is so difficult that many of its key equations remain unsolved. But to gain insight about how the universe works does not require solving the equations in full. Kaku offers many examples from everyday life that help the reader understand what all the fuss is about and what scientists are actually working on or quarrelling about. In the process, he offers intelligent speculations on the possibility of time travel and faster-than-light movement via wormholes.
2024/06/23 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) (1) Yesterday's Summer Solstice Parade in Santa Barbara: Waiting along Santa Barbara Street, at Canon Perdido, for the Parade to arrive, scenes from the parade (2-minute video), and barbequing afterwards.
(2) Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehi's death sentence overturned on appeal: This is good news, but for every well-known person spared because of intense social-media campaigns and international pressure, dozens of lesser-known dissidents are executed quietly.
(3) The media is hyping the upcoming presidential debate: They use superlatives to reel us in. Oh, it's the earliest debate ever! It can shape the campaigns for months! And so on, and so forth. Take it from me, the debate will do nothing, just as criminal convictions accomplished nothing. The criminal charlatan will die if he isn't in the spotlight. He is gasping for air. Don't give him air!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Undisputed leader: Iran accounts for 74% of global executions during 2023. [Amnesty International]
- EU Soccer: Switzerland was getting ready to celebrate when Germany tied the match 1-1 in stoppage time.
- Copa America soccer: USA defeated Bolivia in the group stage, 2-0. [9-minute highlights]
- A little puzzler: How many times do the two hands of a standard 12-hour clock meet each other during a day?
(5) KIRN Radio Iran (Los Angeles) program, on "The Status of Women in Science and Engineering," Sunday, June 23, 2024, at 6:00 PM PT. [Podcast]
(6) UCSB warns student protesters that their sprawling encampment was illegal and must be removed: After no action was taken by the protesters, UCSB has begun to remove the tents and other artifacts set up across a lawn in central campus. The protesters had also defaced parts of adjacent buildings. [From a letter sent to the campus community by Chancellor Yang]
2024/06/20 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Throwback Thursday: The top photo, taken at a 1927 conference, is a virtual who's-who of the giants of physics. Marie Curie was the only woman among them. Ninety years later, a group of women physicists playfully recreated the photo with only one man among them. [Center] The heightened risk of nuclear war (see the last item below). [Right] A final thought for the day!
(2) Happy summer! We are having beautiful weather in Santa Barbara, but nearly half of the US is experiencing a scorching heat wave already!
(3) Virginia Hislop just graduated from Stanford University's Graduate School of Education at the age of 105: She got her bachelor's of education in 1940, four years after enrolling at Stanford, but earning her master's of education got delayed by 84 years.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Hundreds of Hajj pilgrims are reported dead from extreme heat in Saudi Arabia reaching 125 F. [WaPo]
- AI-assisted drones can decide which fruit to pick based on size, color, ripeness, & estimated sweetness.
- Time-lapse view of world airline traffic during 24 hours. [1-minute video]
- Dire Straits all-time greatest hits: Topped by their fantastic "Sultans of Swing." [113-minute audio file]
(5) Biden's lead among women voters has shrunk from 13% to 8%: How can a campaign be so out of touch to lose the support of women to a misogynist and rapist? Trump's lead among men remains in double-digits.
(6) Arvind Mithal (known simply as Arvind) dead at 77: The Charles W. & Jennifer C. Johnson Prof. of Computer Sci. & Eng. at MIT was known for his work on dataflow architectures and parallel computing. As a graduate student and later as a computer architecture researcher, I read many of Arvind's papers. RIP!
(7) Risk of nuclear war has become quite high: "Dark clouds loom on the nuclear horizon, with threats from all directions: Russia's nuclear bombast in its war on Ukraine, China's construction of hundreds of nuclear missile silos, North Korea's missile testing, India and Pakistan's ongoing nuclear competition, and Iran's push toward nuclear weapons capability. In response, US policy-makers are discussing whether a further American nuclear arms buildup is needed. At the same time, evolving technologies, from hypersonic missiles to artificial intelligence, are straining military balances and may be making them more unstable. The risk of nuclear war has not been so high since the Cuban Missile Crisis." ~ From Science magazine editorial, June 21, 2024
2024/06/19 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Celebrating Freedom Day: Juneteenth, the 19th day of June, commemorates the end of slavery in America's confederate states. On this day in 1865, that is, 159 years ago, the Union Army established authority over Texas, setting free the slaves who still didn't know about the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863. [Top center] Tonight's IEEE CCS tech talk (see the next item below). [Top right] Tonight's Socrates Think Tank talk (see the last item below). [Bottom row] Math puzzles: Find the area of the yellow triangle, the measure of the angle marked X, and the radius R of the blue quarter-circle.
(2) Tonight's IEEE Central Coast Section tech talk: Dr. Benjamin Carlson (Westmont College) spoke under the title "Large Hadron Collider." The talk's more-detailed title was "Beyond the Higgs Boson: Using the Higgs Boson to Look for New Particles and the Future of LHC." Of particular interest is the pursuit of particles that may constitute dark matter.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN revolutionized modern physics when it helped discover the Higgs boson over a decade ago. The LHC will continue taking data for another 20 years, so long-term plans are being made for tackling a number of big questions, with understanding of dark matter being at the forefront.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Canada designates Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist group. [Tweet, in Persian]
- Nvidia overtakes Microsoft and Apple Computer to become the world's most-valuable company. [WaPo chart]
(4) Louisiana passes a bill that requires the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every public classroom. At this rate, the Christian Republic of America isn't far away!
(5) Tonight's Socrates Think Tank talk: Dr. Mohsen Attaran and Dr. Kamran Malek made a joint presentation entitled "Physical Patient ~ Digital Twins."
First, Dr. Attaran discussed the notion of digital twins in general and in the special case of medical applications. A patient's digital twin is an electronic model that holds all pertinent medical information for him/her, including health history, surgeries, allergies, medications, implants, and so on.
Next, Dr. Malek discussed how a patient's digital twin facilitates and speeds up the diagnosis and helps identify appropriate treatments. The entire medical history of the patient, prior diagnoses, imaging results, are consulted and cross-checked within a fraction of a second; what used to take days with manual information requests and evaluations.
2024/06/18 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] Composition of the universe: Two slightly different accounts, both indicating that about 95% of the cosmos is dark energy & dark matter. [Top right] A beautiful calligraphic rendering of a Mowlavi (Rumi) verse. [Bottom left] You can read this sign going across or down: The choice is yours! [Bottom center] Washington: SCOTUS Square. [Bottom right] Help-wanted sign at a Goleta bakery.
(2) The rise of non-traditional schooling: As more US states introduce financial support for home-schooling and private micro-schools, parents are pulling their kids out from low-performing public schools.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- I can assure you this isn't my class: Try to guess the subject being taught!
[Tweet, with photo]
- Facebook memory from June 17, 2021: Extended-family photo, recreated from a 2018 photo.
(4) "Women in Science and Engineering": This is the title of my presentation for the Persian-language "Marzhayeh Danesh" ("Frontiers of Science") radio program, which will be broadcast on Sunday 6/23, beginning at 6:00 PM, on KIRN Los Angeles, AM 670 or FM 95.5 (livestream). My talk consists of four 8-minute segments that will run between news & ads in the 1-hour program. Many of the previous programs are available as podcasts. They also livestream their programs.
(5) Final thought for the day: #EndGenderApartheid
2024/06/17 (Monday): Today, I present reviews of three books on the Persian poetry of Nezami Ganjavi.
(1) Book review: Ganjavi, Nezami (Dick Davis, translator), Khosrow & Shirin, Mage Publishers, 2024.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Before "Romeo & Juliet" (1597), there was Nezami Ganjavi's "Khosrow & Shirin" (ca. 1180 CE). There are in fact quite a few other Persian love-stories/tragedies that precede Shakespeare by centuries. Nezami also wrote "Layla & Majnun," one of the greatest epic love poems in Persian. Nezami has a third love story, "Haft Paykar." All three of these love stories are summarized and interpreted in Summaries and Interpretations of Three Love Stories by Nezami Ganjavi (in Persian, Mirasban, 2022; my review).
Here is the gist of the story: After the death of his wife and a new failed marriage, Sassanid King Khosrow II finally marries Shirin while in exile in Armenia. They live happily together for several years until Khosrow's son, Shiroyeh, also in love with Shirin, orders his father's death. Shirin decides to take her own life, fearing humiliation through forced marriage to Shiroyeh. Khosrow and Shirin were buried in the same grave. The story also features Farhad, a sculptor who fell in love with Shirin and was willing to do anything to win her, but their love remained platonic.
Nezami does not portray Shirin as a damsel in distress to be saved by a knight in shining armor, but as a proto-feminist. Once, when Khosrow comes to her in a drunken state, she does not let him into the castle and reproaches him for his fling with another woman, Shekar. Khosrow was madly in love with Shirin, but Shirin kept rebuffing his advances, because she feared she would become a plaything for him to use as he pleased while he was intoxicated, not the queen she aspired to be. Eventually, Shirin received the marriage proposal she wanted.
By depicting Shirin's influence on Khosrow, which made him undergo transformation from a pointless life of pleasure to a spiritually meaningful one, Nezami dispenses advice on how one should live his/her life and on the importance of selflessness.
(2) Book review: Nizami (Translated from Persian and edited by Dr. Rudolf Gelpke, in collaboration with E. Mattin & G. Hill), The Story of Layla and Majnun, Bruno Cassirer, 1966.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Presented in 53 short, untitled chapters, plus a postscript, this translation of Nizami's epic love poem begins thus: "Once there lived among the Bedouin in Arabia a great lord, a Sayyid, who ruled over the Banu Amir. No other country flourished like his and Zephyr carried the sweet scent of his glory to the farthest horizons. Success and merit made him Sultan of the Arabs and his wealth equaled that of Korah." What ate at this otherwise fortunate man was the fact that he had no son to inherit his wealth. When his wish was granted and he was given a son, celebrations ensued.
"The child was committed to the care of a nurse, so that under her watchful eye he should grow big and strong. So he did, and every drop of milk he drank was turned in his body into a token of faithfulness. Each line of indigo, drawn on his face to protect him against the Evil Eye, worked magic in his soul. ... Two weeks after his birth the child already looked like the moon after fourteen days and his parents gave him the name of Qays. ... [When he grew up,] people told the story of his beauty like a fairy tale. Whoever saw him—if only from afar—called upon heaven to bless him."
The sample quoted passages above and below should convince you that the translation of the work is engaging and of high quality.
Qays was educated under the care of a distinguished learned man. One day he meets Layla, a beautiful girl, a "miracle of creation" whose "face was a lamp, or rather a torch, with ravens weaving their wings around it."
"While all their friends were toiling at their books"
"These two were trying other ways of learning."
"Reading love's grammar in each other's looks,"
"Glances to them were marks which they were earning."
"Their minds were freed from spelling by love's spell,"
"They practiced, writing notes full of caress;"
"The others learned to count—while they could tell,"
"That nothing ever counts but tenderness."
When Qays realized that he can't get Layla's hand in marriage, his aimless and erratic behavior earned him the nickname Majnun (Madman). Scores of pages later, we read about Layla's death. "A cold fever shook her limbs and spread dark blotches and stains over her sweet face. … Sensing that death stood close, she allowed no one near but her mother, revealing in this hour for the first and last time, the secret of her love. … When I am dead, dress me like a bride. Make me beautiful. As a salve for my eyes, take dust from Majnun's path. Prepare indigo from his sorrow, sprinkle the rose-water of his tears on my head and veil me in the scent of his grief. … He will come, my restless wanderer—I know. He will sit at my grave searching for the moon, yet seeing nothing but the veil—the earth—and he will weep and lament."
It happened just as Layla had predicted. When Majnun learned about the death of his beloved, he rushed to her and fell on her grave as if struck by lightning. He exclaimed: "Oh my flower, you withered before you blossomed, your spring was your fall, your eyes hardly saw this world. … Your musk-mole, your gazelle eye—where are they [now]? The splendor of your agate lips, the amber-scented coils of your tresses—what has happened to them?" Majnun goes on and on with his lament, before returning to the wilderness. When he could not find solace anywhere, his longing drove him back to the grave of his beloved.
In short order, Majnun started to feel weak, moving quickly toward death; though not quickly enough from his viewpoint. He transitioned, while reciting a prayer on
Layla's grave: "Maker of all things created! I implore thee in the name of everything which thou hast chosen: relieve me of this burden. Let me go where my love dwells. Free me from this cruel existence and, in the other world, cure me of my torment here."
The exquisite story of the love between Layla and Majnun is Nizami's way of portraying the ideal lover, while dispensing life advice and explaining soul's search for God.
(3) Book review: Abedinejad, Mehdi, Summaries and Interpretations of Three Love Poems by Nezami Ganjavi (in Persian), Mirasban, 2022. [My 3-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Abedinejad intermixes verses from epic poems by Nezami Ganjavi [ca. 1141-1209 CE] with brief textual narratives to summarize and interpret three of the five stories forming parts of Nezami's "Khamsa" ("Five Treasures"). Besides the three love stories covered in this book ("Khosrow & Shirin," "Leyla & Majnun," and "Haft Peykar" aka "Bahram Nameh"), "Khmasa" also includes "Makhzan ol-Asrar" and "Eskandar Nameh."
The book under review begins with a 15-page preface, written by Mehdi Farahani Monfared, who offers a brief biography of Nezami and also introduces the author. About a quarter of the book is devoted to "Khosrow & Shirin" (pp. 29-76), one-sixth is taken up by "Leyla & Majnun" (pp. 77-109), and more than half (pp. 111-227) covers "Haft Peykar."
There are quite a few books and articles on Nezami's "Khosrow & Shirin," including a wonderful new English translation by Dick Davis
(my review). "Leyla & Majnun" has similarly received much attention; see, for example, the translation by Dr. Rudolf Gelpke (my review). Both of these love-stories/tragedies predate Shakespear's "Romeo & Juliette" by several centuries. "Haft Peykar" has a somewhat different nature, for even though it does contain elements of a love story, it is mostly the life story of King Bahram Gur, known for his hunting skills and seven wives: The seven "peykars" or "beauties" of the story's title.
The book could have benefited from an index to help link the similar notions discussed in the three stories.
2024/06/16 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] A happy Fathers' Day to all dads and father-like nurturers & mentors, past, present, and future! Today, we particularly remember our fathers who are no longer with us. They are missed! [Top center] Two steps forward, one step back (see the next item below). [Top right] Food equation: World population reaching 10 billion by 2050 + 40% of the Earth's agricultural land already degraded = Disaster. [Bottom row] Combined graduation and Fathers' Day celebration at a park near UCLA, with yummy take-out food from Shamshiri Restaurant. The proud graduate had the company of our entire extended family, some of them coming from far-away places.
(2) For women, there is good news and bad news: The good news a few days ago was the rising level of contribution by women to scientific/technical papers over the past two decades: In the US, contributions of women rose from 30% to 42% (26% to 39% worldwide). Here is the bad news: The status of women on the corporate ladder is declining. While half of entry-level positions are held by women, the fraction declines to one-third at the VP level and to about one-fourth at the C-suite level.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- An option for pensioners: Retirement on a college campus with a pass to attend any class they wish.
- The oldest unsolved problem in mathematics: Does there exist an odd perfect number? [12-minute video]
- Human athletic abilities are improving so fast that we may soon turn into a different species.
- Starting with 5, every second Fibonacci number is the hypotenuse of a right triangle with integer sides.
(4) Another watchdog loses its battle with MAGA: Stanford has shut down its Internet Observatory, which aimed to identify viral disinformation about election procedures and outcomes in real time. Ongoing lawsuits and congressional inquiries into the Observatory have cost Stanford millions of dollars in legal fees.
(5) Wells Fargo fires 12+ employees who pretended to work: With the prevalence of remote work, some companies have deployed tools that monitor keystrokes and eye movements, take screenshots, and record Website visits. Technologies like "mouse jigglers," which make it appear as though workers are using their computers when they are not, allow workers to evade surveillance.
(6) Final thought for the day: This hand-made card and gift of audiobooks for Fathers' Day put a smile on my face. Thank you, my precious daughter!
2024/06/15 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] China has been steadily rising in contributions to published scientific/technical papers: It overtook EU in 2019 and USA in 2023. India is also on the rise. It's worth noting, however, that a significant share of retracted papers are also from India & China. [Center] That's a real cat on the bookshelf, not a figurine! [Right] This madman has no place in government: In a "policy" meeting with top congressional Republicans, Trump made a bizarre claim about Pelosi's daughter, and one of her four daughters responded.
(2) United Auto Workers union is reportedly coping with tensions between its student members focused on the war in Gaza and its blue-collar workers focused on pocketbook issues. [NYT]
(3) UCLA has a new chancellor: University of Miami President, the Mexico-born global public health researcher Julio Frenk, will become the next chancellor of the University of California, Los Angeles. He will inherit from the retiring Chancellor Gene Block a campus roiled by protests over the Israel-Hamas war.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Abortion bans are good for the travel business. [NYT infographic]
- Arizona man planned a mass shooting of Blacks & other minorities at a rap concert to incite a race war.
- Facebook memory from June 14, 2021: On repunit primes (prime numbers of the form 111...11).
- Facebook memory from June 14, 2021: Worry about crony capitalism, not socialism.
- Facebook memory from June 14, 2020: Religion has become a tool of politics (Persian poem).
- Facebook memory from June 15, 2014: Fathers' Day celebration, 10 years ago.
(5) The habit of comparing ourselves to others can lead to poor mental health: "The comparison starts at an early age. Perhaps we wish we had the same toys as one of our friends or the backpack they have. As we grow older, ... you may find yourself comparing how much money you make to others or where you are in terms of relationships, education, or careers. ... If it is not addressed, comparison can lead to poor mental health and issues like anxiety and depression."
(6) Start-ups go to war: The war with Russia has supercharged the Ukrainian tech sector to form a drone development superhub. [E&T magazine]
(7) Fire Seyed Hossein Mousavian: Princeton U. professor and former Iranian diplomat with blood on his hands, threatens that Iran can quickly cause $1 trillion damage to UAE in the event of a war with the US.
(8) The hostage-taking Iranian mullahs are rewarded: In a prisoner swap deal, #HamidNouri who was serving a life sentence in Sweden for his role in the mass-execution of political prisoners was returned to Iran.
2024/06/14 (Friday): Today, I offer reviews of 3 books on understanding and dealing with mental illness.
(1) Book review: Nakazawa, Donna Jackson, Girls on the Brink: Helping Our Daughters Thrive in an Era of Increased Anxiety, Depression, and Social Media, Harmony, 2022.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Science journalist Donna Nakazawa maintains that "our daughters, students, and the girl next door are more anxious and more prone to depression and self-harming than ever before." In 2019, 1 in 3 girls reported symptoms of major depression, vs. 1 in 10 boys. A typical young girl feels that her life is one endless performance, during which she is examined and judged. When combined with unchecked immersion in social media, the mental state above can derail a young girl's emotional development.
Fortunately, there is also good news. Puberty, which is considered a particularly vulnerable period for girls, is also a time when the female brain is responsive to various kinds of support and scaffolding. This responsiveness can potentially turn a young girl's innate sensitivity into a superpower.
In her book, Nakazawa offers 15 simple strategies for raising emotionally healthy girls, based on cutting-edge science that explains the modern pressures that make it so difficult for adolescent girls to thrive. I was fortunate to attend Nakazawa's book talk, sponsored by UCLA's Semel Institute, on March 5, 2024, when she reiterated the need for urgent action to save our girls.
(2) Book review: Amador, Xavier, I'm Not Sick, I Don't Need Help: How to Help Someone Accept Treatment, Publisher, 20th Anniversary Edition, 2022. [My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Anosognosia (lack of insight) is a neurological condition in which the patient is unaware of their neurological deficit or psychiatric condition. One of the most-challenging tasks in caring for a loved one with mental illness is to get them to accept that they are sick and then to open them up to advice and help from professionals. Based on decades of experience with mentally-ill patients and their families, Amador advanced a four-part strategy dubbed LEAP (listen, empathize, agree, partner) for developing partnership and trust with those experiencing anosognosia.
Amador's I'm Not Sick has become a classic, providing information and insights, not only to mental-health and criminal-justice professionals, but also to family members who care for a mentally-ill loved one. In this 20th Anniversary Edition, all chapters have been updated with new research on anosognosia and much more detail on LEAP.
You can read an excerpt of I'm Not Sick on this Web page. And here is a 75-minute talk by Amador on his book. For those with less patience, this 18-minute TEDx talk contains all the essentials.
(3) Duckworth, Ken, You Are Not Alone: The NAMI Guide to Navigating Mental Health, unabridged 14-hour audiobook, read by the author & Tim Fannon, Zando, 2022.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Many families who care for loved ones suffering from mental illness are in the dark about diagnoses, treatments, and recovery processes, which leads to frustration and inability to help. When it comes to mental health, the US healthcare industry remains chaotic, underfunded, and inaccessible. To make matters worse, there are no tests, such as bloodwork and X-ray used for physical ailments, to help with definite diagnoses of mental illness, leading to conflicting and confusing advice.
This NAMI-supported book, which oozes with expertise and compassion, contains:
- First-person accounts illustrating the diversity of mental health journeys
- Guidance on dealing with mental health conditions and seeking care
- Research-based evidence on what treatments and approaches work best
- Insight and advice from renowned clinical experts and practitioners
NAMI, National Alliance on Mental Illness, is a valuable resource that the sufferers of mental illness and their families/caretakers can turn to for advice and help. Among other activities, NAMI supports peer-to-peer and family-to-family classes and discussion groups. [Web site]
2024/06/13 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Throwback Thursday: Shams Beer was a popular and fairly inexpensive brand in Iran before the Islamic Revolution. The Armenian-owned Shams Beer Factory in Eastern Tehran was set on fire by Islamists on January 30, 1979, with its contents looted. [Top center] New Yorker cartoon: "The captain has informed us that our arrival will be somewhat delayed because of Europe's continuing shift to the right." [Top right] Meet Iran's 6 presidential candidates: Three are fairly well-known (Pourmohammadi is a hanging judge, who, like Raisi, has blood on his hands; Ghalibaf is corrupt to the core; Jalili was Raisi's ideologue). The other three are highly unlikely to win (Pezeshkian is a reformist who may have been allowed to run as a show candidate; Zakani and Ghazizadeh are nobodies). As usual, several big names, including a former president and a former speaker of the Parliament, were disqualified, which should make for an interesting campaign season. [Bottom left] Socrates Think Tank talk (see the next item below). [Bottom center] Math puzzle: In the isosceles triangle ACD, find the length X of AB. [Bottom right] Talangor Group talk (see the last item below).
(2) Last night's Socrates Think Tank Talk: Dr. Mohammad B. Bagheri talked about "The God of Spinoza." There were 165 attendees.
Baruch Spinoza [1632-1677], a philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish origin, opined that though everything ultimately derives from God, s/he cannot be the cause of sadness since s/he is perfect. As understood by Spinoza, the real cause of sadness is ignorance or people's lack of understanding the causes that have led them to feel sorrow.
In Spinoza's view, it is absurd to think of God as a being who listens to our prayers and gets angry at us when we misbehave. To follow God is to work hard to understand the nature around us and to be resigned to living according to nature's laws. When we see something as a miracle, it is simply because we have not yet discovered the laws of nature that govern or cause it.
The Enlightenment thinker was branded a heretic, but his philosophy is loaded with subtle religious insights. He recognized the existence of God but was an enemy of religion. Albert Einstein once said that he believed in "Spinoza's God," which was seen as proof that great scientific minds have no time for superstitious fairy tales.
Spinoza is a key figure in rationalism. He was excommunicated by religious authorities, who instructed everyone to avoid him and to cease all communication with him. Spinoza's most-significant work was on ethics, which, by his own request, was published after his death.
(3) I have fond memories of Jerry West, the basketball and Lakers legend who just died at 86: In my graduate-student days at UCLA, I watched a lot of basketball, and watching Jerry West play was a treat. His silhouette has been immortalized on the NBA logo. RIP.
(5) Women have made gains in STEM research: A large-scale study by academic publisher Elsevier has found a ~50% increase in contributions of women researchers to STEM fields (26% of total production in 2000 to 39% in 2022; 30% to 42% in the US). At the current rate of progress, parity is still ~30 years away.
(6) Tonight's Talangor Group talk: Dr. Khalil Rashidian spoke under the title "Climate Change and the Heightened Water Crisis in Iran." There were ~70 attendees.
There has been much talk about the dwindling water resources in Iran for the dual reasons of climate change and inept water-management officials. Businesses run by top clerics and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps abuse water resources to maximize their short-term profits, showing no concern for long-term consequences of their action. A few officials who criticized this state of affairs were sidelined or forced into exile. Environmental activists are routinely arrested and imprisoned for opposing the government's shortsighted policies.
Against this background, Dr. Rashidian's talk consisted of two parts. First, he presented a general overview of climate change (global warming and the attendant sea-level rise), along with current and future consequences of expected changes. In the second part, he focused on the case of Iran, with an extensive review of the depletion of water resources and the resulting damage to the environment and the livelihood of local farmers. A particularly challenging problem is the sinking of ground which damages farmlands and gobbles up buildings and other infrastructure in sinkholes.
While pursuing appropriate policies might mitigate some of the problem, much of the damage inflicted by past inaction and abuse appears to be irreversible. Border disputes over water resources complicates future planning and raises the severity of the problems.
2024/06/12 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Is there an example in human history when book-burners were the good guys? [Center] Amanda Montell's The Age of Magical Overthinking (see the last item below). [Right] Imaginative artwork with a message: Seen on Sunday at the arts & craft show along Santa Barbara's Cabrillo Blvd.
(2) Trump supporters say that Hunter Biden was convicted to project a fake image of a fair legal system: Imagine what they would say if Hunter had been exonerated!
(3) Saudi Arabia invests in chip design: The kingdom's National Semiconductor Hub, which will develop fabless chip companies, as part of a strategy to position itself as a leader in semiconductor design, hopes to attract 50 firms by 2030 to develop simple chips, with manufacturing done internationally for now. [Bloomberg]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- As people around the world gain in English fluency, the translated book market has shrunk. [NYT]
- What an excellent 5-minute workout! Nice music too!
- Engineering design: I had no idea that bowling pinsetter machines are so complex! [12-minute video]
- Math puzzle: Consider y = 2^x. Is there a non-integer value for x that yields an integer value for y?
- Super-funny stand-up comedy routine by Jim McDonald. [23-minute video]
- Facebook memory from June 11, 2016: My daughter's graduation from UCLA.
(5) Book review: Montell, Amanda, The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality, unabridged 6-hour audiobook, read by the author, Simon & Schuster Audio, 2024.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I became familiar with linguist Amanda Montell's work through Wordslut (my review on GoodReads), a wonderful mix of pop culture and academic linguistics that addresses the ways in which patriarchy has invaded and overtaken the English language.
In The Age of Magical Overthinking, Montell maintains that in the 21st century, our focus has shifted from external threats to internal ones. Glued to our phones and alienated from our loved ones, we are increasingly lonely. She points to cognitive biases that rule our brains, from the "Halo effect," cultivating worship/hatred of larger-than-life celebrities, to how the "Sunk Cost Fallacy" can keep us in harmful relationships long after we have realized their toxicity.
Our society faces a crisis of the mind, which is intensified by misinformation and disinformation from social media and other sources. Our reliance on specialists has been replaced with taking advice from untrained influencers. Montell exposes our cultural obsession with irrational beliefs and debunked ideas, and gives us tools to escape it.
2024/06/11 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Virtual talk on Persian-language computer output (see the next item below). [Center] Rethinking Intelligence, a book by Rina Bliss (see item 3 below). [Center] Patrick House's Nineteen Ways of Looking at Consciousness (see the last item below).
(2) How We Taught the Computer to Write in Persian: This was a title of a talk I gave on Monday morning to a group of graduates from Arya-Mehr/Sharif University of Technology. The attendees included 4 of my former students, a couple of whom shared stories from our interactions some 5 decades ago. The talk was very similar to the ones I have been giving to various audiences since 2017, updating the slides by adding figures and other material each time. Here is a link to the PDF slides of my talk.
(3) Book review: Bliss, Rina, Rethinking Intelligence: A Radical New Understanding of Our Human Potential, unabridged 6-hour audiobook, read by Samantha Tan, Harper Audio, 2023.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
The nature of intelligence has been debated for centuries, with the debate intensity picking up in recent decades, as we began struggling to define artificial intelligence. For a long time, the test-based intelligence quotient (IQ) was accepted and used to "measure" intelligence, with the results used to predict a child's future and to plan his/her course of studies and career options. Bliss, a genetics expert and member of the faculty at Rutgers University, adds fuel to the fire that debunked the primacy of IQ tests and the innate nature of intelligence.
She presents her ideas in 9 numbered chapters, sandwiched between introductory and concluding chapters. Chapters 1-4 constitute Part I, Understanding Intelligence (Thinking intelligence; Understanding IQ; The nature of Intelligence; Nurturing intelligence). Chapters 5-7 comprise Part II, Nurturing Intelligence (The growth mindset; From mind to mindful; Learning to connect). Chapters 8-9 of Part III are about Valuing Intelligence (Getting smarter as a society; Seeing value in us all).
Relating her challenging family life, with a chronically overworked mom and a perpetually overdosed dad, Bliss tells us that, as a part-Asian student, being perceived as a superior intellect was her ticket out of trouble. "Even for a 'smart kid' like me, the pressure to perform was overwhelming. I was tormented by the fear that I wouldn't measure up."
Sharing insights from the burgeoning science of epigenetics, Bliss helps us harness our environments to empower our minds. One key is eliminating toxic stress. Other factors include embracing a growth mindset, prioritizing connection, becoming more mindful, and reforming systemic issues such as poverty, racism, the lack of quality early childhood education. Bliss reframes human behavior and intellect, offering a new perspective for understanding ourselves and our children.
(4) Book review: House, Patrick, Nineteen Ways of Looking at Consciousness, unabridged 5-hour audiobook, read by Taylor Clarke-Hill, Macmillan Audio, 2022. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
A poem can be translated in many different ways. There is no such thing as the "correct" translation. In fact, none of the many translations may trigger the same emotions in the reader as the original poem. House's book title mimics commentaries by Eliot Weinberger and Octavio Paz, who looked at 19 translations of a 1200-year-old Chinese quatrain.
Consciousness is a very difficult topic to discuss and understand. Most descriptions of it entail either hand-waving or circular arguments. I am afraid that all 19 ways discussed by House suffer from the same shortcomings. However, one does learn a great deal about related topics in psychology and neuroscience in the course of pursuing an understanding of consciousness.
2024/06/10 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] How the extreme right creates non-existent issues to anger the MAGA base into voting and contributing money: This poll is based on the totally false assumption that undocumented immigrants can vote if they want to. In reality, they can't register to vote. [Center] G7 taps women's-rights activist @AlinejadMasih for its Gender Equality Advisory Council. [Right] These two women are separated by less than one meter in space and more than 1400 years in time!
(2) Your driving score: We all know about credit scores, but did you know that there is also a driving score? The score is based on how often you speed, slam on the brakes, look at your phone, or drive late at night. The data can be collected by your car or smartphone apps and sold to brokers, who work with auto insurers. [NYT]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- UC given a temporary restraining order against UAW strikers, while its claim of strike illegality is assessed.
- Apple announces built-in intelligence for iPhone, iPad, & Mac, while setting a new standard for privacy in AI.
- Iran's assassins & kidnappers target dissidents and former US government officials. [13-minute video]
- PBS "Firing Line" program examines the Electoral College: Reasons for abolishing or keeping it.
(4) An Ohio high-school graduate hands a copy of Handmaid's Tale to a school official to protest the book's banning by her school district.
(5) The Brain and Hate: The multi-part online series "The State of Hate" is co-sponsored by the Friends of Semel Institute, the Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital Board of Advisors, and the UCLA Initiative to Study Hate. The UCLA Initiative to Study Hate is a three-year pilot project intended to foster cutting-edge research and high-level teaching to understand better and mitigate group-based hate.
In today's first installment, after opening remarks by Dr. David Myers, Distinguished Professor, Director of the Luskin Center for History and Policy and Director of the UCLA Initiative to Study Hate, UCLA Professors Adriana Galvan and Mario F. Mendez discussed the opportunities and challenges of studying the neuroscience of hate. They also covered some of the cognitive processes that advance hateful behavior & how we can counter them.
Evolutionarily, hate has served the role of ensuring our survival. In this role, it is closely related to fear. However, hate has outlived its usefulness in today's law-abiding societies. It is now threatening, rather than ensuring, our survival.
Part 2, Hate and the election, and Part 3, Hate and the social media, will come in fall 2024. Recordings of these discussions will be made available on the Semel Institute Web site.
2024/06/09 (Sunday): Today, I offer reviews of books on words, languages, and communication skills.
(1) Book review: Pirnazar, Nahid (editor & compiler), Judeo-Persian Writings: A Manifestation of Intellectual and Literary Life, Routledge, 2022. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Judeo-Persian documents, that is, Persian-language texts written in the Hebrew alphabet, date back to the 8th century CE. They include Biblical epics, Biblical commentaries, historical texts, liturgical poems, and court & trade documents.
Judeo-Persian religious poetry is closely modeled on classical Persian poetry, with the best-known poet being Mowlana Shahin Shirazi, who composed epic versifications of parts of the Bible. The poet, a contemporary of Hafez, is known to have worked during the 1316-1335 CE reign of Ilkhan Abu Sa'id Bahadur Khan.
Once adequately researched and properly catalogued, the rich literary tradition of works written in Judeo-Persian can contribute to a better understanding of linguistics, history, and sociocultural issues of nearly three millennia of Jewish presence in Southwest Asia.
Dr. Pirnazar takes a valuable step in this direction by reviewing the history of Judeo-Persian (Part 1; pp. 1-41) and providing representative samples of Judeo-Persian writings (Part II; pp. 43-121). Each sample includes the original text, its Perso-Arabic version, and an English translation. Three pages of references and a 3-page index conclude the book.
(2) Book review: Montell, Amanda, Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language, unabridged 7-hour audiobook, read by the author, Harper Audio, 2019.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
A misguided English proverb goes, "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words [or names] can never hurt me." In fact, words, and language more generally, are tools of oppression and deception and are thus potentially hurtful.
For many centuries, coining words and devising linguistic rules have been under the control of powerful white men. The English language is full of words that are used to put down women and other marginalized groups. In the case of women, the use of "bitch," "slut," and "pig" are quite familiar. Some of the above started as normal (occasionally even positive) words that were appropriated for use as put-downs. Others were created as insults.
Montell makes us aware of the uneven way in which male and female gender are treated and offers suggestions on how to handle this imbalance. She puts her linguistics degree to good use in tracing sociolinguistics' historical roots and its impact on the contemporary feminist stance broadly practiced today.
Given that we view the world, and even think, through the lens of language, Montell's observations on how to take back the language and make it more precise in dealing with gender are quite important for anyone who wants to use language effectively and fairly.
According to Library Journal, "[Wordslut] blends academic study with pop-culture attitude ... At its heart, this work reflects a tenet of sociolinguistic study: language is not divorced from culture; it both reflects and creates beliefs about identity and power."
(3) Book review: Duhigg, Charles, Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection, unabridged 7-hour audiobook, read by the author, Random House Audio, 2024.
[My 3-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Duhigg confides that he wrote this book when he realized that his own communication skills needed improvement, which is somewhat of a surprise, given that he is a journalist.
All you need to know about the subject matter of the book is included in the first 15% or so. The elaborations in the rest of the book aren't particularly helpful. Good communicators, the kind of people who are routinely used in hostage-negotiation situations or find themselves leading and influencing jury deliberations, are characterized by empathetic listening skills and the ability to help a conversation move along by injecting interesting questions, the kinds that trigger emotions and require deep thinking.
For example, rather than ask a shallow question about your line of work, they may inquire about the aspect of your job that you like best. Although a good communicator should avoid making a conversation about him/herself, injecting emotional, personal comments that project vulnerability is usually helpful.
Good communication skills, which are acquired through practice, don't only impact our professional stature. We can lead healthier, happier, and more fulfilling lives when we connect with others. Conversations positively affect our brains, bodies, and how we experience the world.
2024/06/08 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Some of the 24+ victims of Islamic Republic of Iran's terrorist attacks under Seyed Hossein Mousavian's watch: Princeton University should fire him from his faculty position. [Center] Calligraphic writings are usually produced with special calligraphic pens: A number of Persian masters also produce calligraphic art with ordinary ball-point pens. This wonderful sample is from Akbar Mojaradi. [Right] Kaveh Akbar's Martyr! A Novel (see the last item below).
(2) Virtual Town Hall Meeting facilitated by the Santa Cruz Faculty Association: UCSB faculty and union organizers were present in a Zoom gathering on Friday afternoon to update us on the latest developments on the academic workers' strike and its impact. My own classes are not affected by the ongoing strike (one is a graduate course with no TA and the other is a freshman seminar graded based on attendance), but my colleagues are experiencing much anxiety over how to handle the end-of-academic-year tasks without violating various laws. Students, particularly those about to graduate, are even more anxious.
(3) Book review: Akbar, Kaveh, Martyr! A Novel, unabridged 11-hour audiobook, read by Arian Moayed, Random House Audio, 2024.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Kaveh Akbar's poetry has been published in The New Yorker and The New York Times, among other venues, and his work has received a lot of critical acclaim as well as multiple prestigious awards.
Martyr! is Akbar's debut novel. It features the profoundly-sad protagonist Cyrus Shams, an Iranian-American who was brought to the US as a baby by his father Ali. A major theme in the story is the gruesome death of Cyrus's mother, Roya, whose Tehran-to-Dubai Iran Air flight was mistakenly shot down over the Persian Gulf by the US Navy. There were 66 children aboard the flight. Cyrus was supposed to be the 67th, but Roya decided to leave her months-old baby at home. However, bear in mind that nothing in the story is what is seems; there are quite a few plot twists!
Other major themes in the story are the struggles of Cyrus's father, Ali, a hard-working & proud laborer, relatives and acquaintances who were physically or psychologically injured during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, and the plight of Orkideh, a very special artist who is dying from cancer. We also learn about Cyrus' imaginary brother, Beethoven, who once had a conversation with basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
As a poet, Cyrus is in a constant struggle with life as well as death. He wants to die in a way that serves a bigger purpose, hence the novel's title, which, in Cyrus' view, does not mean strapping explosives to himself and carrying out a suicide-bombing mission. Much of the fascinating story is about Cyrus (his struggles, depression, addiction, and sense of powerlessness), but there are a few chapters that are told from the perspective of his parents, one of his friends, and his uncle.
This is a difficult, but rewarding, novel to read. It draws you in, but wears you out at the same time. There are a couple of fillers, which in my view should have been left out. For example, the life story of the great Persian poet Ferdowsi does not belong in this otherwise absorbing story. Ditto for discussion of another great poet, Mowlavi (Rumi).
2024/06/07 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Bora Bora is an island in French Polynesia: The extinct volcano, Mount Otemanu, sits at the center of this atoll. The Teavanui Passage, the only opening to the ocean, allows large ships to enter the serene lagoon. [Top center] New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest: What do you think of my entry? "Time travelers from the future bring us the cutest things!" [Top right] Qasr al-Farid, an unfinished tomb in Saudi Arabia: The Saudis have spent nearly $1 trillion in recent years on expanding tourism. But what does tourism mean in a country that enforces strict Islamic laws? [Bottom left] Election circus in Iran: Former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad signs up to become a presidential candidate. His chances of passing the filter of the Guardian Council are slim to none. More importantly, he is mistaken in believing that his criticism of high-level mullahs will erase the effect of his calling Iranian street protesters "dust & dirt," while security forces under his command shot them! [Bottom center] Home: Multilingual sign seen over the Ocean Road underpass on the UCSB campus. [Bottom right] Kip Thorne's The Science of Interstellar (see the last item below).
(2) Imagine our country's history, its pursuit of a more-perfect union, and its ideals of equality being delegated to a bigoted felon for safeguarding!
(3) Did the COVID-19 pandemic leave us a legacy of other diseases? Whooping cough cases have doubled and unusual forms of cancer have begun to appear. [NYT]
(4) Book review: Thorne, Kip, The Science of Interstellar, unabridged 7-hour audiobook, read by Eric Michael Summerer, Tantor Audio, 2014. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I recently watched Christopher Nolan's 2014 sci-fi film "Interstellar." I particularly enjoyed the powerful film score, composed by Hans Zimmer. In order to augment my understanding of the film's story, I searched for and found the following explanation of the film's script and its plot summary.
https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/interstellar-explained-meaning-plot-summary/
Further investigation led to the book under review here. Cal Tech theoretical physicist and Nobel Laureate Kip S. Thorne [1940-], who was intimately involved in the making of "Interstellar," explains that the notions behind the film's story, mainly black holes and wormholes, are grounded in real science. When scientific facts had to be stretched, care was taken to keep events and scenes within the realm of possibility.
"Interstellar" was directed by Christopher Nolan, after Steven Spielberg dropped out due to disagreements with Paramount. Nolan went on to achieve even greater fame with his recent film, "Oppenheimer," which was honored with 7 Academy Awards.
Thorne starts his book with the film's history and his interactions with the actors, special-effects artists, and other collaborators, before proceeding to describe the actual physics in the remaining 30 chapters, organized into 7 parts, as follows:
- Foundations (the universe & its laws, warped time/space, black holes)
- Gargantua (anatomy & imaging, gravitational slingshots, disks & jets)
- Disaster on Earth (blight, gasping for oxygen, interstellar travel)
- The wormhole (visualization & discovery, gravitational waves)
- Exploring Gargantua's environs (Miller's & Mann's planets, vibrations)
- Extreme physics (5th dimension, gravitational anomalies, singularities)
- Climax (the tesseract, messaging the past, lifting colonies off Earth)
2024/06/06 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] D-Day celebrated after 80 years: On June 6, 1944, troops from the US, Canada, and Britain landed in northern France under heavy fire. The invasion helped lay the groundwork for victory over Nazi Germany in 1945. World leaders (minus Putin, who was not invited) and WW II veterans, some of them 100+ years old, have gathered in France to mark the occasion. [Top center] Throwback Thursday: Photos with my three sisters, over the years. [Top right] CE Capstone Project Presentations (see the last item below). [Bottom left] Yesterday, I taught my last class for the spring quarter and will go into summer mode upon grading a last homework assignment and a few research reports. [Bottom center] Of possible interest to my SoCal readers: Maestro Shardad Rohani, in concert with Roudaki Orchestra, featuring violin soloist Cyrus Forough, Sunday, July 14, 2024, at UCLA's Schoenberg Hall. [Bottom right] I hate to criticize queers during this Pride Month: But someone please tell those who placed the bottom sign at the UCSB encampment about what they do to LGBTQ people in Gaza and other Middle Eastern Arab/Islamic countries.
(2) President Biden speaks on the 80th anniversary of D-Day: To surrender to bullies or to bow down to dictators is simply unthinkable. To do that means forgetting what happened here on these hallowed beaches in Normandy. Make no mistake, we will not bow down. And we will not forget.
(3) Stanford U. will suspend 13 students who were arrested after occupying the president's office: The pro-Palestinian protesters illegally entered a building, injured a law enforcement officer, and caused extensive damage to buildings in Stanford's historic quad.
(4) Computer engineering senior capstone project presentations at UCSB today: It's rewarding to watch seniors turn into competent engineers! [CE capstone Web site with detailed descriptions and team members]
Project name – Description (Sponsor)
Locus – A low-cost, stand-alone sensor used to measure turbulent dissipation in the ocean ... (Coast Lab)
EyeMatic – Camera system that utilizes machine learning for eye anatomy recognition (Alcon)
United Sensors – Support for integrating multiple redundant sensors on quadcopter drones ... (AeroVironment)
P.E.T.E. – Proof of concept to monitor astronauts' progress as they complete procedures ... (NASA)
PenGUI – Touch screen GUI written in Python to control a VCSEL laser (Praevium)
Lumirail – Dynamic LEGO art installation map in downtown Boston, featuring LEDs that show ... (Jeong Group)
Chirality – Smart glove that acts as a hand-motion to computer interface (IFT)
Homeflow – Intuitive health wearable that collects meaningful data (IFT)
Concordia – All-in-one assistant to help control any bluetooth or wifi connected devices in ... (Laritech)
FSAE – Sensor suite for Gaucho Racing’s GR24 Formula car ... (SingleStore and UCSB Urca)
Empro – Electric modification that transforms traditional mechanical bikes into e-bikes (CNSI)
Unmanned Surface Vehicle – Small unmanned watercraft drone surveying coastlines ... (AeroVironment)
2024/06/05 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] The intensity of destruction in Ukrainian cities as a result of the Russian invasion (NYT infographic). [Center] Meme of the day: "Whoever lives for the sake of combating an enemy has an interest in the enemy's staying alive." ~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche [Right] Taylor Swift is really a big deal: Her concerts have notable impact on local economies.
(2) For those interested in the history of floating-point arithmetic and the impact of IEEE 754 Standard: UC Berkeley Professor William Kahan presented 27 lectures during May-July 1988 on challenges of floating-point arithmetic and how IEEE Standard 754, first issued in 1985, made the situation much better, though by no means perfect. Professor Kahan, a Turing Award winner, turns 91 today.
(3) Serial degree seeker: Benjamin B. Bolger, 48, has 14 advanced degrees, plus an associate's and a bachelor's from Harvard, Stanford, and Yale, to name a few, in subjects such as international development, creative nonfiction, and education.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Pro-Palestinian protesters occupying the office of Stanford University President have been arrested.
- Boeing's Starliner capsule takes astronauts to orbit: The project had suffered years of costly delays.
- US clears the way for antitrust inquiries of Nvidia, Microsoft, and OpenAI. [NYT]
- Computer Science 2023 Curricula released by IEEE Computer Society, superseding Curricula 2013. [PDF]
- There is overwhelming evidence that Israel runs a US influence campaign on the Gaza War. [NYT]
(5) National Air & Space Museum's lectures on samples-return missions: Following three previous lectures on samples-return missions from the Moon, an asteroid, and a comet, the fourth and last lecture in the series, delivered by Dr. Meenakshi Wadhwa (Arizona State U.), was about returning samples from Mars, both in already completed missions as well as missions planned for the near future.
The planet Mars has fascinated humans for centuries. But it is only in the last few decades that robotic orbiters, landers, and rovers have allowed us to explore the Red Planet in ever increasing detail. Some of our biggest questions relating to the formation and planetary-scale evolution of Mars, including its geologic and climate evolution, the history of water and volatiles, as well as the potential for the development of life in its ancient past can only be addressed by detailed analyses of carefully selected Martian samples in state-of-the-art Earth-based laboratories. The campaign to return Mars samples to Earth is underway with the on-going collection of well-documented samples by the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover. Dr. Meenakshi discussed the samples that have been collected so far, those expected to be collected in the near future, and the scientific motivations for bringing these samples back to Earth.
2024/06/03 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Blue Arch, Sicily, Italy: Symbol for entire generations of lovers, better known as the arc of kisses, this natural wonder, was purchased by the municipality after it was confiscated from the mafia, and was later restored using methods with very low environmental impact. [Center] Cartoon of the day: Is the world we humans experience a simulation? [Right] Russia's human trafficking: Forty-six children taken from Ukraine are up for adoption in Russia (source: NYT).
(2) American Association for the Advancement of Science CEO expresses worries about flat or reduced research budgets and a trend at the US Supreme Court to overturn or limit federal agency policies that are informed by science.
(3) Trump's conviction hurt him in the pocketbook: The value of his shares in Trump Media & Technology Group fell by $400 million in one day.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Mexico's bloodiest election (37 assassinated candidates) will likely produce its first female president.
- Rupert Murdoch, 93, marries Elena Zhukov, a retired molecular biologist, in Los Angeles.
- UCSB, UCSD, and UC Irvine added to the list of University of California's striking campuses.
- Brace yourself for a heat wave that will bring triple-digit temperatures to much of the western US.
- Persian fusion music: A beautiful Arabic song, performed with Persian lyrics. [Audio file]
- Mexico elects its first woman and first Jewish president, Claudia Sheinbaum, a respected climate scientist.
(5) Written in the 1950s and published in 1961: "It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character." ~ Joseph Heller, Catch 22
(6) A Chinese spacecraft lands on the far side of the moon: The uncrewed Chang'e-6 probe, named for the goddess of the moon in Chinese mythology, will collect rare samples from a region that no other country has landed on.
(7) Princeton must fire Mousavian: The Wikipedia page for Seyed Hossein Mousavian, now at Princeton University, has been updated to include sheltering assassination squads during his ambassadorship term in Germany, which led to his forced return to Iran.
(8) The summer Olympics will cause business owners in Paris to forego their August vacations, when, traditionally, you find the sign "ferme" ("closed") on many shops and boutiques. Amid tightened security, 15 million visitors are expected to visit the City of Light.
2024/06/02 (Sunday): Reviews of three books covering our universe, diet, and fantastic numbers.
(1) Course review: DeGrasse Tyson, Neil, The Inexplicable Universe: Unsolved Mysteries, six half-hour lectures in the "Great Courses" series, undated. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson is a wonderful explainer of difficult scientific topics. The six lectures in this course are entitled:
- History's Mysteries
- The Spooky Universe
- Inexplicable Life
- Inexplicable Physics
- Inexplicable Space
- Inexplicable Cosmology
Summaries of the six lectures are available on the Great Courses Web site.
This course was the basis of a 2012 documentary miniseries.
(2) Book review: Avena, Nicole M., Sugarless: A 7-Step Plan to Uncover Hidden Sugars, Curb Your Cravings, and Conquer Your Addiction, unabridged 6-hour audiobook, read by Kim Ramirez, Tantor Audio, 2023.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
That too much sugar is bad for you is something we all know. But the fact that sugar is addictive isn't as well-known. Sugar addiction begins in childhood. Kids' foods are loaded with sugar, and some parents make the problem worse by rewarding good behavior with sugary snacks. You may have heard the statement "Eat your broccoli and I'll give you a lollipop" from a parent. It is unfortunate that eating good food is portrayed as undesirable, an act that should be rewarded with harmful food.
Avena's 7-step plan, which I have already started to follow in my own life, is as follows:
- Admit you're addicted
- Take stock of your sugar intake
- Identify your triggers
- Begin with your beverages
- Break down your breakfast
- De-sugar your dinner
- Keep lunch & snacks super-simple
In this 68-minute video, Dr. Nicole Avena is interviewed about her book.
(3) Book review: Padilla, Antonio, Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them: A Cosmic Quest from Zero to Infinity, unabridged 14-hour audiobook, read by the author, Macmillan Audio, 2022.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Antonio Padilla, a leading theoretical physicist and YouTube star, asserts that numbers are awesome, but they are even more awesome if they represent physical realities. Physics gives numbers personalities. He then takes us on a cosmic tour of nine of the most-extraordinary numbers in physics, including:
- 1.000,000,000,000,000,858, the factor by which Usain Bolt slowed time during a record-breaking dash
- Graham's number, which is so large that it might cause your head to collapse into a singularity
- TREE(3), whose finite value could never be reached before the universe reset itself
- 10^(-120), which measures the highly-unlikely balance of energy the universe needs to exist
- 0.000,000,000,000,000,1 or 2^(-16), the unexpected mass of the Higgs boson particle
And, of course, there are zero & infinity (actually, infinities), not to mention the infamous googol & googolplex.
This YouTube presentation by Padilla, entitled "Mysterious Numbers: Unlocking the Secrets of the Universe" touches upon many of the Fantastic Numbers concepts.
2024/06/01 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Late lunch at Shalhoob's Funk Zone Patio, followed by desserts at Goat Tree. [Center] IranWire cartoon: The Butcher of Tehran is being depicted as a saint. [Right] Some of the memorial plaques displayed on Santa Barbara's Stearns Wharf, including one that explains how the wharf was named.
(2) Is Salman Rushdie really wrong on Palestine? A self-described "Muslim" accuses Rushdie of Islamophobia. "Salman Rushdie is the embodiment of modern-day Islamophobia, a literary figure who masquerades as a 'progressive free thinker' and a by-product of a liberal atheist elite obsessed with Islam."
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Come on, US voters! Having a hard time deciding between a convicted felon & an old guy who walks funny?
- Bill Mahr advises pro-Palestinian protesters to take up the cause of gender apartheid.
- The US women's soccer team looked sharp today in prevailing over South Korea 4-0. [4-minute highlights]
- Math challenge: Find the greatest common divisor of 2^25 + 1 and 2^26 + 1.
- Facebook memory from June 1, 2020: We need politicians who read books!
- Facebook memory from June 1, 2011: Human beings are wired for optimism.
(4) Prepare the popcorn for Iran's presidential election soap opera: Already, infighting has started among factions close to the Supreme Leader, the only ones that will be allowed to run in the upcoming election to replace President Raisi.
Iranian elections are tightly controlled by the Guardian Council, which simply and without any explanation disqualifies anyone not to Khamenei's liking during the "vetting" process. But, at this early stage, candidates are allowed to sign up and to run their mouths against their potential rivals.
Former President Ahmadinejad seems to have much info about who went into which hotel room with whom, and is threatening to expose supposedly pious men with very loose zippers. Exposing financial fraud is another feature of Iranian elections, but somehow the embezzlers tend to prevail and everyone forgets about their misdeeds shortly after the election.
The mullahs' opposition groups will collect a lot of ammunition against them in the coming weeks, as exposures and threats of exposure cause one candidate after another to withdraw. Two high-level prospects have already announced that they won't run. Next will come a wave of disqualifications of candidates previously thought to be regime insiders.
You may need more than one tub of popcorn! [Persian version on Facebook]
2024/05/31 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Carpet bazaar in Tabriz, Iran. [Center] Nikola Tesla's statue in Niagara Falls, New York. [Right] Traditional Iranian breakfast.
(2) According to Donald Trump, the trial leading to his conviction on 34 felony charges was rigged: "The real verdict is going to be November 5 by the people," he maintains. But then, he has said repeatedly that he won't accept the election outcome if he loses!
(3) Voyager 1 resumes its scientific mission after an interstellar crisis that required its antiquated 1970s computer to be fixed remotely over a distance of 24 billion km. [Source: Science magazine]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Hossein Amanat, architect of Tehran's Azadi Tower, awarded honorary doctorate by U. British Columbia.
- Australia cautions its citizens against traveling to Iran. [Source: Kayhan London]
- Evaluation of the impact of Facebook misinformation on the uptake of the COVID-19 vaccine in the US.
- The ancient art of calligraphy is experiencing a revival. [NYT story]
- Persian music: "Jaan-e Maryam," a composition by Kambiz Mojdehi, played by international artists.
- After 45 years of being banned from public performance, Iranian women singers still sound wonderful!
(5) The following is a list of Republican officials calling for Trump to drop out of the presidential race, now that he has been convicted of 34 felonies.
The list is currently empty. It will be updated as Republican officials dare to stand up for their party.
(6) Verdict on the great Persian poet Sa'adi: I chanced upon a May 27, 2017, Facebook post by Yalda Sadeghi (reposted by a friend) in which she faults Sa'adi for his misogynistic, anti-Semitic, and xenophobic verses. Yes, he did write the wonderful verse,
"Human beings are members of a whole; In creation of one essence and soul,"
which is admired worldwide, but he also wrote,
"If the Christian well's water is unclean; It shouldn't bother you when washing a Jew's corpse,"
insulting Christians and Jews in one verse.
The original post and its repost garnered numerous comments, both in approval and in disapproval. Some commenters cited additional Sa'adi verses that are in poor taste. Many commenters pointed out that Sa'adi, like anyone living in those days, was the product of a society and a historical period. Judging him by today's standards is inappropriate.
The bottom line: Be proud of your talented and brilliant ancestors, but also be aware that they had many failings as humans, so don't raise them to the status of gods.
[My Facebook post, with Sa'adi's original Persian verses.]
2024/05/30 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Center] A first in US history: Trump found guilty on all 34 felony counts in the Manhattan hush-money case (see also the next item below). [Right] Today's special session of the United Nations General Assembly to honor Iran's President Raisi was very sparsely attended.
(2) Many high-ranking Republicans continue to stand with Trump after his conviction: Calling the trial a political circus and Trump a political prisoner (even before he is imprisoned) is an insult to hard-working Americans who assisted with Trump’s indictment and conviction. Members of the jury which convicted him are in danger, as are the prosecution team. Even if the DA had political motives, he still had to convince the jury that crimes had been committed and the defense had the opportunity to contradict the arguments and evidence. No person with such disregard for the law and the legal process should be entrusted with a public office.
(3) FBI dismantles world's largest botnet: Comprised of 19 million infected computers in 190+ countries, the botnet facilitated financial fraud, identity theft, child exploitation, bomb threats, and cyberattacks.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Omarosa was telling the truth: There is indeed evidence of Trump referring to her using the n-word.
- Now in Stanford U.'s archives: Correspondence between Ebrahim Golestan and writer Sadeq Chubak.
- Mitsubishi robot solves Rubik's Cube in record 0.305 s: The best human solution time is 3.13 s.
- Bullet-proof bike tires, invented by NASA for use on rovers exploring other planets. [4-minute video]
- Facebook memory from May 30, 2018: Free speech vs. inclusivity on campus (even more relevant today).
- Facebook memory from May 30, 2018: The eighth Parhami Family reunion (the very last one).
(5) MIT Press leads in open-access book publishing: Libraries will pay an advance fee for each book. If enough funding is generated, digital copies will be made available to readers free of charge.
(6) Scorching temperatures predicted for summer months: Workers need additional protections, but some states are taking away existing protections.
(7) Extreme weather events and inflation caused US home insurance rates to increase by 11+ percent last year: These higher insurance costs are not reflected in the official inflation data, which explains part of the disconnect between how people feel about the economy and how it looks on paper.
(8) Super-sharers of fake news on Twitter: Only 2107 registered US voters were found to account for 80% of the fake news appearing on Twitter. Super-sharers consist mostly of women, older adults, and registered Republicans. Their posts are generated through manual and persistent retweeting, not automatically.
2024/05/28 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Book lovers' wall clock. [Center] The colors of irrational numbers: Write the number pi in hexadecimal (3.243F6A8...), drop the integer part and keep the first six fractional digits (243F6A). The resulting 6-digit hex code represents a color. Any other irrational number can be similarly linked to a color (credit: Vadim Ponomarenko). [Right] The Science of the Good Samaritan (see the last item below).
(2) Some US baseball records and record holders will change: Major League Baseball officially incorporates into its record book stats from the Negro Leagues, in operation from 1920 to 1948 when baseball was segregated.
(3) Non-permanence of on-line content: According to Pew Research Center, 38% of Web pages in existence in 2013 are no longer available, along with 8% of Web pages that existed last year. The analysis also found that 23% of news Web pages and 21% of government Web pages contain at least one broken link, and 54% of Wikipedia pages include at least one "References" link that is broken.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- University of California academic workers strike expands to UCLA and UC Davis.
- Being built at Liberty Canyon over the US 101 Freeway, SoCal's wildlife bridge will open in 2026.
- Food-mood connection: The food you eat affects all aspects of your health. Mental health is no exception.
- Our inner sense of time and why time appears to go by faster as we age. [3-minute video]
- The story of how blue LEDs were made, unlocking a revolution in efficient lighting. [12-minute video]
- If gays shouldn't get married b/c you are a Christian, then you can't order a steak b/c I am a vegetarian!
(5) Book review: Smith, Emily, The Science of the Good Samaritan: Thinking Bigger About Loving Our Neighbors, unabridged 7-hour audiobook, read by the author, Zondervan, 2023.
[My 2-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I am really ticked off by this book and its author. The word "Science" in the title along with the author's "Dr." honorific (she is a Duke U. faculty member with a PhD in epidemiology) strongly suggest a popular science book about what makes us humans an altruistic species, a la Matthieu Ricard's Altruism: The Science and Psychology of Kindness. So, I was shocked by the fact that the book contains no science, other than occasional references to the author's scientific background.
There are, however, many references to Jesus and Bible verses. I'm not saying that the book is worthless but that it is offered in a misleading package. A perfectly-fine box of cookies may similarly be dismissed if the package bears the label "Chocolates."
I liked some of the author's musings, such as her criticizing Texas Governor Greg Abbott over blaming the very high COVID rates in his state on a relatively small number of undocumented immigrants who tested positive, while Texas already had one of the highest COVID infection rates in the nation. Such logical statements do not overcome my primary objection to the book.
2024/05/27 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] On this US Memorial Day, we honor the memory of those who fell to protect our freedom: Kissing and hugging the flag and wrapping our misguided policies in it are cheap. Doing something for our veterans, including protecting them from predatory private colleges that mislead them and milk their educational benefits would be priceless. I love quoting Mark Twain on this occasion: "Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it." [Center] The 2024 Italian Street-Painting Festival (I-Madonnari) in Santa Barbara: Held over the Memorial Day weekend at the Old Mission, the Festival brings together experienced and aspiring artists to create wonderful chalk paintings. There is also a music stage (sample music) and food & merchandise booths. [Right] Salman Rushdie's Knife (see the last item below).
(2) Hamas fires rockets at Tel Aviv for the first time in months: Israel retaliates by bombing a camp where it claims Hamas has significant presence.
(3) Math challenge: If a, b, c, d are nonzero positive integers such that a/b + b/c + c/d + d/a is an integer, then (4abcd)^(1/4) is also an integer.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Landslide in a Papua New Guinea village buries 2000 people alive.
- Taiwan is capable of disabling advanced chip-making machines in the event of a Chinese invasion.
- Check-in computers at several US hotels run a remote-access app that leaks guest info to the Internet.
- IRI thugs attack protesters in London: One of them kicks a woman who was pushed to the ground.
(5) Book review: Rushdie, Salman, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, unabridged 6-hour audiobook, read by the author, Random House Audio, 2024.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Satanic Verses, which elicited a fatwa death-sentence for the author from Ayatollah Khomeini, was Rushdie's 5th book. He has written more than a dozen books since. He states, somewhat jokingly: You don't have to start with that particular book; there are plenty of other books to go around.
In Knife, Rushdie does not name his assailant, referring to the 24-year-old knife-wielding man as "A." On a fateful day in August 2022, more than 33 years after Khomeini's fatwa, Rushdie suffered 15 stab wounds, one of them blinding him in the right eye and another one nearly paralyzing him. His recovery was long and arduous, and he dedicates this book to those who saved his life.
Rushdie tells his story in 8 chapters, bearing short titles: "Knife" (description of the attack); "Eliza" (the love of his life); "Hamot" (site of a hospital in Erie County, Pennsylvania); "Rehab" (nearly a month, somewhere in NYC); "Homecoming" (transferring to a second home in NYC); "The A." (a masterfully-written imaginary conversation with his assailant); "Second Chance" (reflections on what he might do with his newfound life); "Closure?" (is he now a different person or writer?).
Through Rushdie's powerful words, the reader experiences the pain of 15 knife stabs that almost killed him and the challenges of numerous procedures that brought him back from the dead. Of course, no one expects Rushdie to write about his medical ordeal and the subsequent rehab (both physical and psychological), without throwing in philosophical observations such as the irony of an atheist seeing his survival and return to a near-normal life as a miracle. Rushdie's writings are full of miracles and other supernatural events, but he himself is a follower of science and logic.
Rushdie describes his assailant as a simpleton who had no clear understanding of Rushdie's work or even of his own motives for planning to kill him. Rushdie cites a doctor as saying that he was lucky that the assailant had no idea of how to kill a man with a knife! Interspersed with factual reporting about his near-death experience and meditations, Rushdie also offers plenty of commentary on the poisonous political climate around the world.
Rushdie is grateful for all the messages of love and support coming from around the world. To him, the fact that Iran showed no reaction was fully expected, given that the country's leader had issued the death fatwa. However, he was stung by the total lack of support from India or Pakistan. Incredibly, someone once told him that if you make yourself a subject of hate then some hateful person will come for you.
2024/05/26 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Math puzzle: In this diagram featuring a regular pentagon, find the measure of the angle marked in orange. [Center] Our family's gathering for a memorable Memorial Weekend BBQ, hosted by my sister. The flowers and plant are samples of my photography during an afternoon walk in East Ventura. [Right] Math puzzle: Find the radius of the circle in this diagram featuring a rectangle and four equal angles.
(2) "The Seed of the Sacred Fig": Mohammad Rasoulof made the film in Iran, cleverly skirting the censors. He recently fled the country on foot, after the mullahs issued an arrest warrant for him. He and his film are now at the Cannes Film Festival. Inspired by the #WomanLifeFreedom Revolution, the film's storyline represents gender and generational conflicts within a family.
(3) Tropical algebra: Consider the set of real numbers and operations of "tropical addition" x ta y = min(x, y) and "tropical multiplication" x tm y = x + y. An alternative form of tropical algebra uses max(x, y) for addition.
Computations of tropical algebra are easier/faster to implement in hardware, because multiplication is simplified to addition and exponentiation to multiplication. When real-valued input data is encoded as the transition instant of a signal from 0 to 1, a single OR gate can perform tropical addition.
The descriptor "tropical" was attached to this algebra by French mathematicians in honor of the Hungarian-born Brazilian computer scientist Imre Simon, who published several papers on these ideas in the late 1970s. Apparently, to Frenchmen, Brazil is quite tropical! Some on-line sources credit Bernard Carre's 1971 paper, "An Algebra for Network Routing Problems," as the birthplace of these ideas.
Many of the properties of ordinary algebra are valid in tropical algebra. For example, distributivity holds:
x tm (y ta z) = (x tm y) ta (x tm z)
Translation: x + min(y, z) = min(x + y, x + z)
A polynomial in tropical algebra takes the form:
f(x) = (a(0)) ta (a(1) tm x) ta (a(2) tm 2x) ta . . . ta (a(n) tm nx)
= min(a(0), a(1) + x, a(2) + 2x, . . . , a(n) + nx)
Explanation for tropical exponentiation: x te j = jx
Tropical algebra began garnering serious attention when it was realized that the Floyd-Warshall shortest-path algorithm using min-plus operations can be formulated in tropical algebra.
There is more to tropical math than the short introduction above. For example, there is tropical geometry, tropical analysis, and tropical cryptography, to name a few related areas.
The following book describes Tropical geometry as "a combinatorial shadow of algebraic geometry, offering new polyhedral tools to compute invariants of algebraic varieties. It is based on tropical algebra, where the sum of two numbers is their minimum and the product is their sum. This turns polynomials into piecewise-linear functions, and their zero sets into polyhedral complexes. These tropical varieties retain a surprising amount of information about their classical counterparts."
Maclagan, Diane and Bernd Sturmfels, Introduction to Tropical Geometry, American Math. Soc., 2015.
Here is a nice introduction to tropical mathematics.
2024/05/25 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] An old private residence in Yazd, Iran, renovated and converted to a hotel. [Top center] A top-level mullah wishes martyrdom for all Islamic Republic of Iran officials: Finally, we are on the same page! [Top right] Just a beautiful, soothing image to prepare us for the long Memorial weekend ahead! [Bottom left & center] Double standards: Why is it that the UN and other sources condemn the death and destruction in Gaza Strip on a daily basis, whereas the same calamities in Ukraine barely get a mention? [Bottom right] Musings of a curious engineer: Today, during my long walk along Santa Barbara's waterfront, I noticed that hubcaps or wheel interiors for most cars (around 90%, perhaps) use 5-spoke designs. There are rare 6- and 7-spoke designs, but nothing else. Pursuing the reasons on-line, I found the following explanations. The Wheels have had 5 lugs for decades, so having 5 spokes allows the lugs to sit inside or between spokes. A prime number of spokes prevents vibrational harmonics from building up and creating undue stress. Of course, 3 and 7 are also prime numbers. Five spokes look nicer than 3 and are easier to manufacture than 7.
(2) Yesterday's ECE Distinguished Lecture at UCSB: Dr. Matthew W. Daniels (NIST) spoke under the title "Computing Beyond Boolean Logic Using Time, Stochasticity, and Geometry."
We are so used to standard logic elements such as AND and OR gates that we find it difficult to imagine another platform for computation. Yet alternate computing technologies are being pursued with vigor. Among these, optical computing, biological computing, and quantum computing are best known. What Dr. Daniels focused on today is the use of the same CMOS logic elements to compute differently, because the data is viewed differently. He presented several examples.
a. Temporal computing: Inputs are logic signals that transition from 0 to 1, with the instant of transition being the data value of interest. With this interpretation, an AND gate outputs the larger of the two real input values and an OR gate the smaller of the two. One way of storing values is to convert time to resistance by building a variable resistor whose resistance increases with the time elapsed since a control signal was asserted and it stops changing when a data single arrives.
b. Stochastic computing: The probability of a signal value being 1 is the value of interest. An AND gate then becomes a multiplier of real numbers. This computation scheme imposes serious time penalties in most cases, as the inputs must vary over long-enough time periods for probabilities to make sense, but there are application areas that can benefit significantly from this scheme.
c. Ising models: These are mathematical models that use discrete variables to represent magnetic dipole moments of atomic "spins" that can be in one of two states (+1 or –1). The spins are arranged in a graph, usually an infinite lattice, allowing each spin to interact with its neighbors. Neighboring spins that agree have a lower energy than those that disagree.
d. Binarized neural networks: Data is encoded in the following way. Device conductance (inverse of resistance) represents synaptic weights and voltage/current stand for neuron I/O. This scheme, which multiplies weights by values and sums the resulting products, can be implemented in a purely analog form.
2024/05/24 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Rock-n-roll band from the Stone Age. [Top center] UCSB West Campus Point faculty housing Palm Plaza: More than three decades ago, and today. [Top right] Islamic hierarchy: Nine people died in a chopper crash atop the mountains of northwestern Iran. Yet we seldom read about the victims besides Ebrahim Raisi or Hossein Amirabdollahian. This memorial service announcement names five of the victims. The other four simply don't count. [Bottom left] Cartoon from the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo: Woman Life Freedom Helicopter. [Bottom center] Yet one more talk about consciousness (see the next item below). [Bottom right] Talk on self-love vs. narcissism (see the last item below).
(2) Today's SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind talk at UCSB: Dr. Hakwan Lau, RIKEN Center for Brain Science, Japan, and author of In Consciousness We Trust: The Cognitive Neuroscience of Subjective Experience, talked under the title "The End of Consciousness."
Consciousness is a very difficult topic to discuss and understand. Most descriptions of it entail either hand-waving or circular arguments. My latest read on the topic, Nineteen Ways of Looking at Consciousness, failed to clarify the problem for me.
My review on GoodReads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6518323954
According to Lau, 'consciousness' is an archaic term that served a useful purpose at one time. Biologists who are interested in the nature of life no longer try to look for 'vital forces.' Instead, they identify specific functions that are essential for living — e.g. reproduction, metabolism, genetics, digestion — and they develop mechanistic explanations for these functions, through careful experimentation and empirically-informed theorizing.
Lau suggests that subjective perception, attention, metacognition, wakefulness, rational control of behavior, and even metaphysical speculations about the mind are all intertwined. Just like 'vital forces,' the utility of consciousness for rigorous theorizing has expired, and the term has accordingly become a liability. As the end begins, a more mature science will emerge.
(3) Tonight's Talangor Group program: Dr. Arash Taghavi spoke under the title "Self-Worth: From Self-Love/Respect/Confidence to Narcissism." Before the main talk, Dr. Fereydoun Majlessi briefly discussed "Iran's Ownership of Three Islands in the Persian Gulf." There were ~100 attendees.
Self-love, like all love, arises from caring. The object of love isn't assumed to be perfect; in fact, s/he may have many shortcomings, that give rise to the need for help or protection. Self-absorption, or narcissism, is based on the idea of self-perfection, which, counterintuitively, arises from a high level of insecurity.
A narcissist is incapable of listening or taking advice. You cannot argue with a narcissist, because s/he is insecure and views any criticism as a personal attack. A narcissist demands compliance from those around him/her and resorts to gaslighting, threatening, or guilt-tripping, for example, to control others.
The difference between self-love/respect/confidence and narcissism is the difference between a personality trait and a personality disorder. There is no known treatment for narcissism, so we should learn to recognize its symptoms in order to protect ourselves.
Self-love can lead to the establishment of personal boundaries, which are sometimes mistaken for narcissism. A self-loving person lives as s/he pleases and does not constantly seek other people's approval. S/he also does not try to impose a way of life on others.
It is difficult to sum up discussions on psychology and human behavior. Boundaries between various conditions are often blurred and open to interpretation. In the preceding paragraphs, I have tried to touch upon key terms and concept. I found the following article helpful: https://www.psychologs.com/narcissism-v-s-self-love-who-wins/
2024/05/23 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Throwback Thursday (1): When I was a child, we'd buy sugar in cone form and would use tools ("ghand-shekan" or sugar-cube breaker) to break it down into small, irregular chunks to serve with tea. Packaged sugar-cubes had just entered the market, but they were still luxury items and, besides, would melt too quickly in your mouth. [Top center] Throwback Thursday (2): Undated newspaper ad for sea trip from Khorramshahr, Iran, to New York, taking 30-32 days. [Top right] Throwback Thursday (3): Iranians on the street in the pre-Islamic era. Notice the smiles, which have been wiped off their faces by the joyless mullahs. [Bottom left & center] Talk on the evolution of the Persian script (see the last item below). [Bottom right] Cartoon from the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo: Woman Life Freedom Helicopter.
(2) C. Gordon Bell, a visionary who helped design some of the first minicomputers in the 1960s, dead at 89: Bell [1934-2024] went to work in 1960 for Digital Equipment Corporation, where he started designing computers like the PDP-8, the first commercially successful minicomputer. Bell spent 23 years at DEC as vice president of research and development before leaving and co-founding his own companies, Encore Computer and Ardent Computer. In 1986, Bell joined the National Science Foundation and advised Microsoft in the early 1990s before joining the company as a senior researcher in 1995. The computer pioneer was always looking ten steps ahead and building that version of the world.
(3) Today marks the 10th anniversary of the Isla Vista mass-murder tragedy that claimed the lives of six UCSB students and injured 14 others on May 23, 2014: Remembrance and memorial events are planned by a number of campus and student organizations.
(4) UN sends condolences for President Raisi's death, seemingly forgetting its own condemnations of Islamic Iran's vast human rights abuses under "the butcher of Tehran" and other regime criminals.
(5) Will we finally afford to go to a live concert? The Ticketmaster parent company is being accused of having an illegal monopoly. Consumers have been screaming for years about obnoxiously high fees charged on top of already expensive concert ticket prices. The US Justice Department finally listened.
(6) Tonight's Socrates Think Tank talk: Dr. Hossein Samei spoke under the title "Script in Iran." He presented a comprehensive review of how the Persian script has evolved over the centuries and outlined the many efforts that have come about to change or reform the script. The challenges that have motivated the aforementioned change/reform proposals include mismatch between the written and spoken forms, elimination of short vowels, inconsistencies brought about by mixing Persian & Arabic scripts, chaos in connecting or not connecting parts of the same word, locations & multiplicities of dots, different shapes for the same letter, and disorder in spelling.
2024/05/22 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Bertolt Brecht said it all: "Who does not know the truth, is simply a fool ... yet who knows the truth and calls it a lie, is a criminal." [Center] My daughter's kashk-e bademjoon (Persian eggplant dish, with curd). [Right] Talk on vibration effects in electronic circuits (see the next item below).
(2) Tonight's IEEE Central Coast Section tech talk: Dan Bezzant (Raytheon) spoke under the title "Vibration Effects on Electronic Circuitry."
The phrase 'solid state' has brought many in the profession to think that digital electronic circuits are immune to mechanical events around them. Bezzant's discussion showed from a practical viewpoint how shock and vibration can affect the function of electronic circuits, how this effect gets propagated from mechanical shock or vibration to the operation of a solid-state circuit, and what design techniques can be used to mitigate or eliminate disruptions to functionality.
(3) This Certificate of Appreciation was awarded by conference organizers for the opening keynote lecture I delivered to DCHPC 2024 on Tuesday, May 14, 2024, under the title "Fixed-Degree and Constant-Diameter Interconnection Networks for Parallel Supercomputing."
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- A UNC-CH business school professor learns that some of his classes were recorded without his knowledge.
- Facebook memory from May 22, 2015: Manhood, manliness, and patriarchy.
- Facebook memory from May 22, 2011: The day I entered historical records.
- Facebook memory from May 22. 2010: On reason overcoming flaming passion.
(5) Did US sanctions kill Iran's President Raisi? According to former FM Javad Zarif, the difficulty in obtaining spare parts for Iran's aging choppers and planes directly contributed to the crash that killed Raisi. Yet, for years, Iran's Supreme Leader and other top officials have claimed that not only sanctions do not affect Iran's economy, but they are blessings in disguise, because they help the country become self-sufficient. As the Persian saying goes: Should we believe the fox's denial or the rooster's tail that's sticking out?
(6) "OSIRIS-Rex: Revealing Secrets from the Dawn of our Solar System": In continuation of the National Air and Space Museum's lecture series on samples-return NASA missions, Dr. Dante Lauretta (Head of OSIRIS-REx research team at the University of Arizona) discussed the findings from the first set of data from analysis of the samples returned from near-Earth asteroid Bennu. The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft launched in September 2016 and began its journey to Bennu, a carbon-rich, near-Earth asteroid. The spacecraft rendezvoused with Bennu in 2018 and successfully obtained a sample in October 2020. The spacecraft embarked on its return voyage to Earth on May 10, 2021. On Sept. 24, 2023, the spacecraft jettisoned the sample capsule and sent it onto a trajectory to touch down in the Utah desert. Analysis of the sample promises to provide insights into the formation of the Earth as a habitable world and the origin of life.
2024/05/20 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Today, on the UCSB campus: Students protesting in support of Palestine are preparing to strike. [Top center] Displays of nature's colorful beauty. [Top right] Lecture on Iran-America relations (see the last item below). [Bottom left & center] The deceased Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi had vowed to escalate the fight against hijablessness: Here are how two artists have interpreted his demise. [Bottom right] Fifteen Baha'i women sentenced to jail terms, fines, and civic probations in Isfahan, Iran.
(2) Get Ready for More 'Hard Landings' in the Middle East (Michael Rubin, in the
Washington Examiner): "Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi perished in what Iranian media initially labeled a 'hard landing.' That Iranians celebrated with fireworks in Raisi's hometown Mashhad reflects the hatred with which Iranians view the regime that oppresses them. This should be a warning to the regime: Raisi is one thing, but when 85-year-old Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has his hard landing, it will kick-start Iranians' active quest for regime change."
"For the European Union to send condolences upon the Butcher of Tehran's death shows the moral blindness at the heart of European policy; it is equivalent to sending condolences upon the 1942 death of Reinhard Heydrich, the German Reich's acting governor of Bohemia and Moravia."
(3) The Cuban spies who infiltrated the US government and operated with impunity for many years: Cuba apparently can't use the gathered intelligence, so it's likely in the business of selling it to other US adversaries.
(4) UCLA Bilingual Lecture Series on Iran: Dr. Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet (U. Penn) spoke today in English under the title "Heroes to Hostages: US-Iran Diplomacy through Race Relations and Human Rights." The Persian version of the lecture was delivered yesterday.
Iranian intellectuals of the post-Mosaddeq era advanced an anti-colonial rhetoric that burst wide open during the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Many writers, some with socialist leanings, watched with interest political happenings in formerly colonized states. These conflicts were often rooted in experiences of racial discrimination and social inequality. At the same time, the Iranian state also engaged with some of these themes and expanded its diplomatic relations with a range of countries in the Global South.
Although formal ties between Iran and the US were strengthened during the two decades preceding the 1979 revolution, social dissent also grew markedly. The debate on human rights gave voice to these concerns, as Iran's politicians and writers reflected on the legacy of human rights and reassessed the country's ties to the West. Race relations provided an unanticipated and often missed opportunity for collaboration.
Note: In the context of this talk and the book on which it is based, "race" also embraces ethnicity (viz., the Arab or the Iranian race).
2024/05/19 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Discussion on AI (see the next item below). [Center] Copter crash in northwestern Iran (see item 3 below). [Right] A Briefer History of Time (see the last item below).
(2) Lecture and panel discussion on AI's past, present, and future: In a Zoom session, hosted by the SoCal Chapter of SUTA (Sharif U. Technology Association), Dr. Babak Hojjat, CTO at Cognizant, reviewed AI's accomplishments and potentials. Panelists Mohammad Ramazanali (Salesforce), Dr. Yahya Tabesh (Professor Emeritus, SUT), and Mitra Zaimi (Unisys) then discussed the topic.
(3) Helicopter carrying Iran's President and Foreign Minister crashes upon landing: Rescue teams have not yet reached the crash site.
Mid-morning update: Early reports from Iran indicated that President Raisi's copter had a hard landing. It now seems that it crashed in a mountainous area with very low visibility, likely by hitting a mountain. While hard landings may be survivable, crashes rarely leave survivors.
Late-night update: Iran's President, Foreign Minister, and seven others are confirmed dead at the crash site.
(4) IEEE honors the 50th anniversary of the Internet: In the second of a three-part program, IEEE virtually celebrated 50 Years of the Internet, honoring the 1974 IEEE Computer Society paper on TCP by Vint Cerf & Bob Kahn. Tomorrow's third part, held in a hybrid format at the Computer History Museum, will officially dedicate the historic paper above, as well as the work of the IEEE 802 Standards Committee and the birth of Google & its PageRank Algorithm. [Streaming on IEEE TV]
(5) Book review: Hawking, Stephen (with Leonard Mlodinow), A Briefer History of Time, unabridged 4-hour audiobook, read by Erik Davies, Random House Audio, 2005. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
A Brief History of Time (1988) was a hugely successful science book that sold a copy for every 750 Earth inhabitants and was translated into dozens of languages, turning Hawking into a global cultural icon. This new version of the book focuses on the most-important topics of the original, adding depth as well as new material and explanations.
When we talk about the greatest scientist of all time, Einstein invariably comes to mind. Hawking isn't at the same level, given the theories for which he is responsible defy experimental verification and are thus viewed with skepticism by some other scientists. But when it comes to explaining science to the public, Hawking beats Einstein and maybe even the "explainer-in-chief" Richard Feynman. Given how many difficult topics were addressed in A Brief History of Time, it is a testament to Hawking's communication skills that so many people read it (or attempted to read it).
In this update & rewrite of A Brief History of Time, Hawking and Mlodinow focus on quantum mechanics, string theory, the Big-Bang theory, & other topics in a more accessible fashion to the general public. Newly discovered concepts are included and previously-known topics are explained in greater detail throughout the book.
2024/05/17 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Right] Geometric beauty of plants and vegetables. [Center] You can tell the chemical composition of a meteor from its color. [Right]
(2) Climate change threatens Big Sur's scenic access road: Between 2016 and 2023, Caltrans spent $315 million dollars in unplanned emergency work in the area after fires, mudslides, and bridge collapses.
(3) Math challenge: You run a lap around the track at an average speed of V. How fast should you run a second lap so that your overall average speed for both laps is 2V?
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Humanitarian aid is flowing into Gaza by way of a floating pier built by the US military.
- Leading cause of death for pregnant & postpartum women in the US: Murder by an intimate partner.
- Actress Reese Witherspoon leads a book club that reliably sends its monthly picks onto the best-seller list.
- Demonstration that a bull set free, without being made angry, runs happily and does not touch anyone.
- Math challenge: Which is larger, the number 10! (10 factorial) or the number of seconds in 6 weeks?
- California Strawberry Festival returns to Ventura County Fairgrounds this weekend, 5/18-19.
- Madrid-based Grupo Talia (orchestra & choir) performs many memorable international pop songs.
- "I Feel Good," performed by Grupo Talia in a way that really makes you feel good!
(5) Our justice system at work: Indiana judge rules that tacos are sandwiches, allowing a taco vendor to operate in a mall that accommodates sandwich shops but bans fast-food joints.
(6) Risky pathogen research: The Biden administration is tightening federal oversight of the so-called "gain-of-function" studies that could enhance risky viruses to increase their ability to cause a pandemic.
(7) Another pay-to-publish program unmasked: "Last year, physician Rupak Desai coauthored more than three dozen conference abstracts in Circulation, the American Heart Association's (AHA's) flagship journal. The works marked a modest fraction of his publications in 2023, which totaled 162. But Desai, scholarly productivity notwithstanding, is not employed by a hospital, university, or any other type of scientific institution."
"Based in Atlanta, Desai runs a business that offers junior doctors from around the world a chance to beef up their CVs before applying for coveted residency or fellowship positions at hospitals or physician offices in the United States. For about $1000 and a commitment to work 10 to 15 hours remotely over a few weeks, last year's participants in Desai's Express Research Workshop could get a byline on three abstracts submitted to AHA's biggest annual conference, the Scientific Sessions meeting, according to an online ad that was removed after Science contacted Desai for this story." [From Science magazine, May 10, 2024]
2024/05/16 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] This UCSB service vehicle nonchalantly drove on walkway near the Engineering II Building around 2:00 PM on Wednesday 2024/05/15 and parked in front of Courtyard Cafe. I hope the driver had legitimate business there, rather than going in to get a cup of coffee. [Center] Opposition figure and anti-compulsory-hijab campaigner Masih Alinejad is being portrayed by Iran's cyber-army as a stooge of the mullahs: They know they are hated and want to transfer some of that hatred to someone whose effective women's-rights campaign has put fear in their hearts. Most Iranians know better than to fall for these childish accusations. Alinejad is human and has committed a number of strategic errors over the years, but she is no stooge of the misogynistic Islamic regime. [Right] Campaign to have ex-IRI official Seyed Hossein Mousavian fired by Princeton U. kicks into high gear.
(2) The Frontier supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Lab again ranked first in the Top 500 list of the world's most powerful supercomputers: The US has 171 systems on the list, including the Aurora supercomputer at Argonne National Lab. As for networking technologies, Infiniband is used by nearly half the systems on the Top 500 list (48%), while Ethernet is used by 39%.
(3) According to US FDA, 200+ diabetes patients were injured when their insulin pumps shut down unexpectedly: Version 2.7 of the t:connect Apple iOS app, used with the t:slim X2 insulin pump with Control-IQ, had a software issue that caused it to repeatedly crash and relaunch, draining the pump's battery and causing it to shut down and suspend insulin delivery. The app has been recalled.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- I am always impressed by how artists draw a portrait: Here is a wonderful sample.
- The design of the Titanic ocean liner and why it was doomed to sink. [19-minute video]
- Paul McCartney praises Beyonce's magnificent cover of his civil-rights-inspired song "Blackbird."
- Persian music: "Dokhtar-e Hamsayeh" ("The Girl Next Door"). [2-minute video]
(5) A so-called think tank in Tehran, with direct ties to IRGC terrorists and the Islamic regime's intelligence apparatus runs Iran's influence campaign in America and Europe, while not being targeted by sanctions.
(6) University of California union of academic employees, which includes graduate-student researchers, TAs, and post-docs, authorizes a strike which may begin as early as today. UAW alleges unfair employment practices over the handling of pro-Palestinian protests.
(7) Florida, the state in greatest danger from sea-level rise and other consequences of global warming, decides to stick its head in the sand and remove references to climate change from its energy policies.
(8) Bidirectional charging: Student transportation provider Zum is initiating a project with the Oakland Unified School District to send power from EV bus batteries back to the California utility grid. Oakland, the first school district to fully electrify its bus fleet, can potentially return 2.1 GWh of energy to the grid annually through this program. Larger districts like San Francisco Unified and Los Angeles Unified are expected to follow suit. [CNBC]
2024/05/14 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Venture scientists and technology entrepreneurship: This is the cover theme of IEEE Computer magazine's May 2024 issue which begins with the column "Dissertation, Inc." and continues with several articles on how elite science & engineering programs around the world encourage their graduates to shift their focus from being job consumers to becoming innovators and job creators. [Center] Terrorist president greets terrorist "diplomat": The so-called diplomat, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison but was later returned to Iran, complains that in prison, he was fed stale bread and high-fat cheese, with no soda! [Right] Yutaka Nishiyama's The Mysterious Number 6174 (see the last item below).
(2) Violence against women: According to Etemad newspaper, at least 23 Iranian women and girls have been killed by men in their families in the first 1.5 months of the Persian new year 1403.
(3) Book review: Nishiyama, Yutaka, The Mysterious Number 6174: One of 30 Amazing Mathematical Topics in Daily Life, Gendai Sugakusha Co., 2013. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This is a fascinating book from start to finish. I recommend it highly to anyone interested in mathematical puzzles, oddities, and mysteries.
Let me describe the number in the book's title, which is the subject of Chapter 15. Take an arbitrary 4-digit number whose digits are not all the same. Perform the Kaprekar operation on the number as follows: Obtain the largest 4-digit number that uses the same 4 digits and subtract from it the smallest 4-digit number with the same digits. Repeat the process by applying the Kaprekar operation on the new number and on every number subsequently obtained. Regardless of the starting number, you always end up with 6174, and the process takes 0 to 7 steps. This amazing property is believed to be incidental, but there may be some deep mathematics behind it. By the way, the same process applied to a 3-digit starting number yields 495. This article by Nishiyama provides more details and quite few other amazing facts.
Here are titles of a few of the book's other 29 chapters, all of them containing interesting and surprising facts. Each chapter is written as a separate article, with an abstract, AMS subject classification, key words, and list of references.
04. Stairway light switches
06. The mathematics of egg shape
12. Miura folding: Applying origami to space exploration
16. Numerical Palindromes and the 196 problem
21. Opening the black box of random numbers
24. Machin's formula and pi
28. Odd and even number cultures
2024/05/12 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Happy Mothers' Day: Mothers make the world go around. Their contributions to our well-being are so broad and deep that, in fact, every day should be Mothers' Day. [Top center] In 2018, May 12, birthdate of the late Maryam Mirzakhani, was designated as Women in Mathematics Day. Mirzakhani was awarded the Fields Medal, mathematic's highest honor, in 2014. [Top right] This afternoon at Ventura Harbor, before celebrating my daughter's birthday with the family at Andria's Seafood. [Bottom left] These are shadows cast by nine zebras photographed from overhead. [Bottom center] Math puzzle: Find the length x. The diagram isn't to scale. [Bottom right] Pro-Palestine protests at UCSB (see the last item below).
(2) The truth behind pro-Palestinian protests at America's elite colleges: These protests aren't about Palestine, Israel, or the war in Gaza, although many participants are sincere in their beliefs that they are. The protests are about Russia, China, and Iran taking advantage of weaknesses in our society to create chaos. American universities, once the Crown Jewels of our socioeconomic system, have been hurting from the effects of COVID and a steady stream of academic and other scandals. The current disruptions may deal a fatal blow to their well-being and the public trust in them.
(3) Sun, Surf and Cinema in Santa Barbara: Free summer films, Friday nights under the stars, Courthouse Sunken Garden, 8:30 PM.
7/05: "Jaws"
7/12: "Point Break"
7/19: "50 First Dates"
7/26: "Blue Crush"
8/02: *** No screening during Fiesta
8/09: "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou"
8/16: "Mamma Mia!"
8/23: "Crazy Rich Asians"
(4) UCSB pro-Palestine encampment in its second week: While the university administration has called for a dialogue and non-disruptive protest, the demands of the protesters, which include the establishment of a Palestinian Studies Department and scholarships for Palestinians students, in addition to divestment from and academic boycott of Israel as well as abolishment of UC Police Department, are unlikely to be met. The campus has responded to the protests with a collective "meh"; there is no police presence and no counter-protests.
2024/05/10 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Commencement 2024 (New Yorker cover). [Top center & right] See how many of these eight Persian sayings/expressions you can identify. [Bottom left] Our volcanic Moon (Science magazine cover feature). [Bottom center & right] A month after treating us to a spectacular total eclipse, the Sun is playing nasty-and-nice with its communications-disrupting geomagnetic storms and the awe-inspiring Northern Lights.
(2) Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof sentenced to 8 years in prison, plus flogging & fines, for making films and documentaries that are "harmful to national security."
(3) Looming strike of UAW academic workers at UCSB: The potential strike is allegedly based on "unfair labor practices" connected to ongoing campus protests on the Gaza war.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Canada's Parliament voted to list Iran's IRGC as a terrorist organization and to shut down their operations.
- Coldplay & Sting join 100+ musicians and other icons urging release of Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehi.
- All sorts of weird standard samples are maintained by US National Institute for Standards and Technology.
- Persian music: Reza Malekzadeh performs "Aram Aram." [4-minute video]
(5) "The West is a woman to be mounted": This is a rather polite translation of what the predominant Arab culture thinks of the West and Westerners. Positive traits of Westerners (compassion, kindness, empathy) are all viewed as weaknesses by the Arabs. Until the West understands this mindset, no amount of negotiation will help bridge the culture gap. It's not just anti-Semitism we are facing but also extreme misogyny.
2024/05/09 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Throwback Thursday: This toy gun was a thing when I was growing up in Iran. You'd load into it a paper strip bearing tiny amounts of gunpowder at regular intervals. Each time you pulled the trigger, the paper strip would move forward, allowing a hammer to hit the next explosive charge. [Center] "The Age-Proof Brain" webinar (see the last item below). [Right] My daughter at an arts-and-crafts market, a 3-day event in Goleta, continuing to Saturday.
(2) When an English town removed apostrophes from street names, such as "St. Mary's Walk," many unhappy residents started a petition drive and used marker-pens to reinsert the apostrophes.
(3) According to Association of American Medical Colleges, for the second year in a row, students graduating from US med schools were less likely to apply for residency positions in states that enforce bans or significant restrictions on abortion.
(4) "The Age-Proof Brain": This was the title of today's webinar by Dr. Marc Milstein, based on his book with the same title. When it comes to keeping your brain in tip-top shape, you aren't limited to crossword puzzles, brain games, and Sudoku. Debunking common misinformation, Milstein shared new, breakthrough science-supported strategies to:
- Improve memory and productivity
- Increase energy and boost your mood
- Reduce the risk of anxiety and depression
- Form healthy habits to supercharge your brain
Whereas our brain shrinks by 5% per decade beginning at age 40, there are things we can do to slow this shrinkage and to minimize its effects. Also, our brain is like a factory, producing useful stuff but also leaving behind junk which should be properly discarded to keep our brain clean. Only 30 minutes of brisk walking per day does wonders for the health of our brain and the rest of our body.
2024/05/08 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] War in Gaza has now expanded to its southernmost region, where many Gazans have taken refuge. [Top center & right] UCSB Reads 2024 authors' talk (see the last item below). [Bottom left] Birthday wish for my daughter (see the next item below). [Bottom right] My freshman seminar class, ECE 1B ("Ten Puzzling Problems in Computer Engineering"), meeting this quarter in Psych 1924.
(2) To my beloved daughter: As you celebrate another milestone birthday, I want you to know how proud I am of what you have accomplished and of the young woman you have become. You were born on Mothers' Day and we will celebrate with the family this coming Mothers' Day. Until then, enjoy your special day today and your arts & crafts endeavors over the next three days. I love you! [P.S.: Photos are from FB memories on May 8.]
(3) My heart goes out to the Class of 2024: These kids began their studies under COVID, struggled with on-line education, and are now trying to graduate, with commencement ceremonies disrupted by war protesters and, even worse, the prospects of classes and final exams being shut down by strikes.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Microsoft to invest $3.3 billion in an AI data center in Wisconsin.
- Rutgers researchers unveil 3D human-body modeling approach with realistic body poses & movements.
- I have a hunch that RFK Jr. isn't the only politician with parasitic brain worm and memory loss!
- The Beatles' "Let It Be," after 50 years: John Legend and Alicia Keys perform. [4-minute video]
(5) UCSB Reads 2024 Program wraps up: Tonight, I attened an informative and entertaining lecture by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross, authors of Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us. This was my fourth and final year on the UCSB Reads Advisory Committee that was charged with selecting the book. I learned a great deal from my participation and found the experience to be immensely rewarding.
My 4-star review of Your Brain on Art on GoodReads.
A previous conversation with the authors about their book (Video).
2024/05/06 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Impact of AI on the fast-food industry: Much has been written about AI in manufacturing, healthcare, education and many other domains. The cover feature of the spring 2024 issue of IT Now focuses on AI's impact on fast food, and food tech more generally. For food preparation, AI improves uniformity and efficiency, as well as hygiene. [Right] SAGE Center talk at UCSB (see the last item below).
(2) Israel marks Holocaust Remembrance Day: Six million Jews were murdered by the Nazi regime and its allies in the Holocaust from 1933-1945.
(3) It seems that most groups opposing Iran's Islamic regime are under double-sided attacks.
From one side, the mullahs' cyber army, using fake names and profiles, spread false stories about their backgrounds and personal lives.
From the other side, foul-mouthed, misogynistic followers of Reza Pahlavi do the same, while the "Prince" (nowadays promoted to "King") tacitly endorses their words & deeds by not commenting.
Needless to say, both camps "discuss" everything but democracy.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Graduation ceremonies at many US universities cancelled or disrupted by pro-Palestine protesters.
- Teens devise a geometric proof for Pythagorean Theorem, a problem that had stumped us for centuries.
- The secret of creativity: "If you want a new idea, read an old book." ~ Ivan Pavlov
- Rousseau on money: "The money you have gives you freedom; the money you pursue enslaves you."
(5) The mathematics of knot theory and some of its applications in material science: Interestingly, the many knots that are known can be arranged into something like the Periodic Table of elements. [11-minute video]
(6) Yesterday's SAGE Center talk at UCSB: Under the title "Drunk: Intoxication, Ecstasy, and the Origins of Civilization," Edward Slingerland (UBC; author of the 2021 book Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization) talked about his book and the research that led to it.
Drawing on evidence from archaeology, history, cognitive neuroscience, psychopharmacology, social psychology, literature, and genetics, Slingerland argued that our taste for chemical intoxicants is not an evolutionary mistake, as we are so often told. In fact, intoxication helps solve a number of distinctively human challenges and played a crucial role in sparking the rise of the first large-scale societies.
2024/05/05 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Cause of Iran's ~50% inflation rate: The mullahs have printed more money in the past 2.5 years than the country had done in the previous 2.5 millennia. [Center] The Myth of Left and Right: How the Political Spectrum Misleads and Harms America (see the last item below). [Right] Paris Olympics: Of the 36 members of IOC's 2024 Refugee Olympic Team, 14 (~40%) hail from Iran.
(2) Jerry Seinfeld, a Jewish comedian who built his brand of comedy on an apolitical show "about nothing," is being forced to choose sides, given the Israel-Hamas conflict and protests on US college campuses.
(3) Iran offers scholarships to expelled pro-Palestine students: That's the recipe! One semester at an Iranian university will bring them back to their senses.
(4) Book review: Lewis, Hyrum and Verlan Lewis, The Myth of Left and Right: How the Political Spectrum Misleads and Harms America, unabridged 4-hour audiobook, read by the first author, Kalorama, 2023.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
We humans are tribal and there is no way around this evolutionary trait. Tribes do not necessarily embrace a consistent, logically-constructed set of beliefs. However, when you belong to a tribe, you tend to assume the validity of the entire belief set. Here's a useful analogy. When you go grocery-shopping, you pick items that you like; there is no rhyme or reason. Suppose the store did not allow you to pick what you want but offered you two filled carts to choose from. You would pick the cart that contains more of your favorite items. But then to turn around and claim that everything in your chosen cart is better than everything in the other cart would not be appropriate. This is unfortunately what we do when we belong to a party: We think that all policies of our tribe are better than everything of the competing tribe.
tend to think that philosophy comes first, followed by policy, and finally party. Evidence shows that it is exactly the opposite: We attach ourselves to a tribe, then discuss policies, and finally we make up a philosophical story to tie all of those incoherent policies together.
At one point in American politics, The New Deal was the single political issue, so designating its opponents as conservative/right and its proponents as liberal/left made some sense. Now, politics is multi-dimensional: There are a multitude of issues such as free trade, immigration, abortion, and so on. We should start using more precise terminology to characterize people's views on individual issues, rather than lumping all of them together. Right/Conservative and left/liberal are highly imprecise. If you want to talk about someone's views on abortion, then characterize his/her views on that one issue, rather than labeling him/her a conservative or a liberal. Unfortunately, we have come to use liberal/conservative and left/right labels as tools of slander.
2024/05/04 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Math: Prove that alpha is twice theta, find the length x, and prove that x & theta add to 45 degrees.
(2) Happy Star Wars Day: May the fourth (be with you)! To mark the nearly 50 years that have passed since the making of the original Star Wars film, US National Air and Space Museum has set up a special exhibit that includes an actual operable X-wing flyer.
(3) Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman [1934-2024] dead at 90: Kahneman, an Israeli-born psychologist, earned a 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics for his integration of psychological research into economic science.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Counter-protesters initiate violence at UCLA: Police intervenes after a few hours of unchecked clashes. [NYT]
- Disruptive protest encampment at UCSB: University administration calls for constructive dialogue.
- On kindness: "The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the greatest intention." ~ Khalil Gibran
- On love: "What we've enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love becomes a part of us." ~ Helen Keller
(5) BASIC turned 60 on May 1: Intended to make computing accessible to a broader audience, Beginner's All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code was popular among novice programmers. BASIC continued to evolve over the years and is still popular among retrocomputing enthusiasts. Its descendants include Microsoft's Visual Basic, Visual Basic for Applications, and Small Basic.
(6) UNC-CH students take down the American flag and raise the flag of Palestine in its place: Elsewhere, in NYC, protesters burn an American flag. Please use your reasoning ability and ask who benefits from desecrating the American flag? Donald Trump, that's who! Ditto for the perception that extremist Muslims are taking over America under the Biden administration. Fingerprints of Putin are all over these coordinated protests. His plans for Ukraine will be crushed under another Democratic administration.
(7) Three geeky events on May 17, 19 & 20, 2024: IEEE honors the 50th Anniversary of Internet TCP/IP.
- Friday, May 17, 3:00-5:00 PM PDT: Online event broadcast from SRI's PARC Campus, featuring talks by Internet pioneers Vint Cerf & Bob Metcalfe and unveiling of IEEE Milestone plaques for the Alto Personal Computer, Ethernet, and Laser Printer. The in-person event is sold out, but you can watch via livestream.
- Sunday, May 19, 12:00-2:30 PM PDT: IEEE i50—Virtual Celebration of 50 Years of the Internet, honoring the 1974 IEEE Computer Society paper on TCP by Vint Cerf & Bob Kahn. [Livestream registeration]
- Monday, May 20, 1:00-4:00 PM PDT: Dedicating three IEEE Milestones: IEEE Computer Society 1974 paper on TCP; IEEE 802 Standards Committee; Birth of Google & PageRank. [Livestream registeration]
2024/05/02 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Center] Florida's infamous 2000 butterfly ballots (see the next item below). [Right] Talk on Gallium-Nitride (see the last item below).
(2) Revisiting Florida's 2000 butterfly ballots: Key requirements of democratic elections include facilitating participation and making it easy to vote for one's preferred candidate on a clear, transparent ballot.
Butterfly ballots used in Palm Beach County, Florida, may have cost Al Gore the presidency in 2000. Many voters (enough to swing the election in a very close race) voted for Pat Buchanan, listed on the right-hand side of the ballot across from the second punch-hole in the middle, thinking that they were voting for Al Gore, the second name on the left-hand side.
Data shows that where butterfly ballots were used, Buchanan got a much higher share of the votes than in other Florida counties. While this isn't a proof that the confusing ballots handed Florida, and thus the national election, to George W. Bush, evidence that they did is overwhelming.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Four Iranian men are identified as having sexually assaulted and killed #NikaShakarami.
- Latinos move to the right: 39% say they'll vote Republican in 2024, compared with 29% in 2012. [NYT]
- Queer Techne: Book explores gay, queer, & feminine communities in early advances in computer science.
- Facebook memory from May 2, 2022: When my daughter relocated to San Diego with a U-Haul truck.
(4) "Interstellar" explained: I recently watched Christopher Nolan's 2014 sci-fi film "Interstellar." I particularly enjoyed the powerful film score, composed by Hans Zimmer. To augment my understanding of the film's story, I searched for and found this explanation of the film's script and its plot summary. Further investigation led me to theoretical physicist Kip Thorne's 2014 book, The Science of Interstellar, which I have started reading.
(5) Tonight's Talangor Group talk: Dr. Elaheh Ahmadi (UCLA ECE Dept.) spoke under the title "Thank God for GaN (Gallium Nitride)." Before the main talk, Mitra Zaimi made a brief presentation on the occasion of Persian Gulf Day, which included screening of a video.
Dr. Ahmadi began with a review of the importance of semiconductors in our daily lives and how abundance and ease of manufacturing have led to silicon becoming the dominant choice. She then outlined certain desirable properties of GaN, which gained notoriety through enabling the production of blue LEDs and the ensuing revolution in energy-efficient lighting, support higher performance as well as reduced size & weight for electronic circuits. While GaN has the drawbacks of much higher cost and more-difficult manufacturing compared with silicon, Dr. Ahmadi cited a growing number of applications, notably in power conversion and RF domains, that use it to advantage.
This EPC Web page presents a summary of GaN benefits and has several videos linked at the end, including applications to motor drive, industrial drones, and DC-DC conversion in data centers.
2024/04/30 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Four members of Iran's security forces are identified as having sexually assaulted and killed the young protester #NikaShakarami. [Center] How adding a 1 to the denominator significantly complicates the integration process and changes the answer. [Right] Voting is way more effective for solving our problems than thoughts and prayers!
(2) We have the first AI commencement speaker: D'Youville University in upstate New York thought its selection would be fun and relevant in an age of AI. Not everyone agreed.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- UCLA student is blocked from entering a campus area by pro-HAMAS demonstrators. [Tweet, with video]
- Mohammad Fazeli's 17-minute TEDx talk (in Persian): Policymaking requires inter-agency cooperation.
- Kurdish music: Sung in the dialect spoken in Kermanshah and Ilam. [Tweet, with video]
- Quotable: "What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other." ~ George Eliot
(4) Facebook memory from Apr. 30, 2014: "We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people." ~ John F. Kennedy [Of equal significance to Islamic Iran and Evangelical America]
(5) Facebook memory from Apr. 30, 2018: Republicans study and pass bills like the rest of us read and accept updated terms and conditions on iTunes. ~ Comedian Seth Myers, speaking at an Obama-era White House Correspondents Dinner
(6) Facebook memory from Apr. 30, 2018: Let me share my reply to a comment on a Facebook post of mine, which many of you will not see otherwise. The commenter essentially claims that all accusers of Bill Cosby were asking for what happened to them, because, like Playboy Bunnies, they use powerful men to get ahead.
"You have really revealed your misogyny in your last comment. Equating half the population of the world with (at most) a few hundred women you encountered while working at the Playboy Mansion shows that you are the one-dimensional person in this discussion. #MeToo isn't just about Playboy Bunnies or even those in the entertainment business. Looking one layer deeper, which is impossible in your one-dimensional universe in which laws are devised based only on personal experiences, one notes that many women are placed in a position to beg for privileges by powerful men who have decided they own and can dole out those privileges. It's ironic that you expect discretion, good judgment, and morality from young women, but not from powerful older men who take advantage of them."
2024/04/28 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] My keynote talk (see the next item below). [Top center] Gross, but interesting, fact: All of the world's humans mushed together into a 1-km-diameter ball and placed on NYC's Central Park. [Top right] Street art in Tehran's Ekbatan neighborhood, depicting the brutality of security forces against women. [Bottom left & center] Iranian Garden in Vanak Villge, Tehran (see the last item below). [Bottom right] Over the years, many of the hardliners of Iran's Islamic regime have fled to the West, overtly or covertly: Campaigns are underway to identify and expel these undesirable elements, some of whom have attained positions of influence in academia and elsewhere. The flight of hardliners from Iran will accelerate as the mullahs' regime continues to crumble.
(2) My forthcoming keynote talk: Entitled "Fixed-Degree and Constant-Diameter Interconnection Networks for Parallel Supercomputing," the English-language keynote will be delivered virtually at the Third International Conference on Distributed Computing and High-Performance Computing, to be held in Tehran on May 14-15, 2024. My talk will be on Tuesday, May 14, 9:45 AM Tehran time (Monday, May 13, 11:15 PM PDT). Attendance is free for those who pre-register.
(3) The 3x + 1 problem, aka Collatz's Conjecture, revisited: An easily-understood and innocent-looking problem that has defied solution after many decades. [13-minute video]
(4) The Chinese government is outraged over Netflix adapting Cixin Liu's novel, Three-Body Problem.
(5) "A Brief History of the Future": Six-part PBS docuseries, hosted by futurist Ari Wallach. I watched the first two episodes last night. It is full of interesting facts, but rather underwhelming in presentation and editing.
(6) Acclaimed soprano Renee Fleming talks about her new edited collection, Music and Mind, containing essays from leading scientists, artists, and health care providers on the powerful impact that music and the arts can have on our health.
(7) Tao Te Ching: "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear."
This quote is often used to imply that the teacher is sent by God or other supernatural forces. I believe in it from a different perspective: Unless you are ready to learn, you won't be teachable.
(8) Vanak Village Iranian Gardens: My family used to live in Vanak, Tehran, adjacent to what later became Al-Zahra U., for many years. So, I was excited to learn about a relatively new large public park in the area that is registered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Carved out from properties formerly owned by the Mostowfi ol-Mamalek family, the park is famous for its flowers (tulips in particular), fountains, and super-tall trees.
2024/04/27 (Saturday): Here is my report on the 2024 Santa Barbara Earth Day Festival.
(1) Santa Barbara Earth Day Festival: Held today & tomorrow at Alameda Park, the festival focuses on various ways of taking care of the environment, including green energy, clean transportation, and more. Many of the attendees came on bikes.
(2) Alameda Park, home of the SB Earth Day Festival, has an elaborate children's playground. And the festival includes many activities for children.
(3) Bikes and e-bikes were big at today’s SB Earth Day Festival: I was particularly impressed with an e-bike that had a big basket to seat two small children and also hold some cargo.
(4) Many models of electric, hybrid, and pluggable-hybrid cars were on display at today's SB Earth Day Festival: I was particularly impressed with the American-made Lucid, which boasts a range of 500+ miles.
(5) As usual, the food court was a popular feature of SB Earth Day Festival: The food was as always over-priced, so I decided to skip eating there.
(6) Other sights at today's SB Earth Day Festival included an inviting coffee cart, a music stage with continuous programming, a demo of induction cooking, and a gadget that protects cars from rodent infestation.
(7) Not included in the six photo collections above, described from top-left to bottom-right, are a large number of displays & booths representing city departments, our elected representatives, businesses catering to Earth Day themes (including organic growers), and artists displaying their work.
2024/04/26 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] On dependable computing (see the next item below). [Center] Talk on converting sewage to potable water (see the last item below). [Right] On software bloat (see item 3 below).
(2) IEEE Computer magazine, issue of April 2024: "With the increased complexity of software systems, dependable, reliable, and trustworthy computing is of paramount importance. Of these qualities, dependability is of particular interest in mission critical systems, where failure can lead to loss of human life. The technology used to build such systems must meet the expectations of its stakeholders' and regulatory requirements." [From Guest Editors' introduction to the special issue]
(3) Bloat is software's greatest vulnerability: Nicholas Wirth's1995 Oberon operating system, which included an editor and a compiler, had a total size of 200 KB. Many of today's operating systems use 200+ KB for their configuration files alone. Bloated software isn't only less efficient, but also significantly more vulnerable to interaction failures and malicious hacks.
(4) Last night's Talangor Group talk: Hamid Shirazi (sociopolitical activist) spoke under the title "Transforming Wastewater into Drinking Water." Before the main talk, the life & work of the great Persian poet Sa'adi was celebrated and Mohsen Mahimani made a short presentation on "The Latest Developments of the Gemini Chatbot." There were ~70 attendees.
Two of the most-important requirements of public health are the availability of safe drinking water and proper disposal of sewage (human waste). Nearly 1/3 of the world's population does not have access to modern, hygienic toilets. Proper sewage disposal is available to an even smaller group.
Wastewater is 99.9% water. The remaining tiny amount is composed of a wide variety of chemicals and organisms. Beyond being an important resource, especially in drier regions, the monitoring of wastewater is a valuable public-health tool (e.g., in COVID detection).
With shortage of drinking water intensifying worldwide, various conversion schemes have been proposed or are being used to generate new sources. The best-known among them is saltwater conversion, which works well for communities with an adjoining sea/ocean. The desalination technology is fairly mature, but it is energy-intensive and has thus seen limited use.
Wastewater conversion is one of the newer methods, which is more efficient. In my community of Santa Barbara, this is done, but the output is intended only for irrigation, as it does not meet the standards of drinking water. Our city has two systems for water distribution, one for potable and another one for reclaimed water. A more elaborate, and thus more expensive, process, involving additional steps, is needed to derive drinking water from wastewater.
Mr. Shirazi outlined the cleanliness standards and provided examples of various approaches being used for producing clean water from sewage. He also showed multiple short videos on the conversion process and the design of industrial plants doing the conversion. Singapore was mentioned as a country that is quite advanced in this regard.
A related discussion is the future of water resources in the world (given that they are not distributed uniformly) and possible armed conflicts over these resources, the way world countries have fought over oil for decades.
2024/04/24 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Doomsday predictions (see the last item below). [Top center] My daughter displayed her artistic chops at this afternoon's Isla Vista Farmers Market: I visited her stand briefly between a class and other commitments. [Top right] Math puzzle: Two congruent rectangles are shown inside a square. What is the leaning angle? [Bottom left & center] Iranian mullahs are frustrated in the war against Israel, so they take revenge against Iranians by unleashing hijab enforcement goons on the streets and arresting artists/celebrities who dare to speak up. Popular rapper #ToomajSalehi has just been sentenced to death for his anti-regime stance and critical song lyrics. A #SaveToomaj campaign is spreading worldwide. [Bottom right]
(2) National Air & Space Museum's lectures on samples-return missions: Today's talk on the Stardust Discovery Mission (samples return from Comet Wild-2) was the second of four lectures, the previous one having been about samples return from the Moon and forthcoming ones discussing OSIRIS-Rex (samples from asteroid Bennu) and bringing back Mars samples. Fascinating talks!
(3) Women's rights take another step back: First it was the overturning of Roe-v-Wade by the US Supreme Court, severely curtailing women's reproductive rights. Now comes the overturning of the foundational sex-crimes conviction of the #MeToo era, that of Harvey Weinstein, by NY Court of Appeals.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Evidence that the Chinese government controls TikTok content (Tweet, with NYT chart).
- Ukrainian resilience: Kharkiv schools have been moved underground, inside subway tunnels.
- The mullah's security forces rape & torture detainees, specifically targeting ethnic & other minorities.
- Michigan Publishing Services offers an expanding collection of free textbooks in electrical engineering.
- Persian music: An oldie song played on the tar.
- Barbra Streisand sings "Love Will Survive," a song from "The Tattooist of Auschwitz."
(5) British soccer teams are playing a few pre-season games on the US West Coast: One on the chosen venues for their "Wrex Coast Tour" is UCSB's Harder Stadium on July 20. [Poster]
(6) "Ey Zan" ("Oh Woman"): An awe-inspiring tribute to the strength and grace of women around the globe. This breathtaking collaboration features the captivating voices of Maliheh Moradi and Mina Deris, who lend their remarkable talent to this powerful ode to womanhood. [5-minute video]
(7) Doomsday countdowns in Iran and Israel: Several years ago, Iran installed timers in many major cities to count down to the destruction of Israel. I believe that these timers will expire in ~16 years. Israel is more aggressive, installing billboards that declare the demise of the Islamic Republic of Iran on Cyrus the Great Day, October 28, 2028 (about 4.5 years from today).
2024/04/23 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Talk on the Periodic Table (see the next item below). [Center] Iranian mullahs are using the fog of war to step up their assault on women: Morality police and "hijab enforcers" are back on the streets in full force, acting more violently than ever before. [Right] Michio Kaku's Quantum Supremacy (see the last item below).
(2) Birth of the Universe and the Periodic Table: This was the title of today's Zoom talk by Mitra Zaimi (chemical engineer, computer scientist), under the auspices of Persian Cultural Center of Atlanta. There were ~50 attendees.
In the beginning, after the Big Bang, there was only hydrogen, the lightest element, with one proton and one electron. A bit later, helium was formed from two hydrogen atoms through a process that is responsible for most of a star's energy. Heavier elements, up to iron, gradually emerged with help from heat and gravity. Elements heavier than iron can be formed only by a process called neutron capture, where neutrons penetrate an atomic nucleus.
The Periodic Table of elements, usually credited to Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev who in 1869 formulated the periodic law relating chemical properties to atomic mass, is a marvel that includes all elements that appear in the universe or that can be created in the lab. No element not appearing in the table can exist. Not all elements in the table were known at Mendeleev's time, but he correctly predicted many of them based on the periodic rules that he discovered.
This interactive version of the Periodic Table allows you to explore the elements & their properties.
(3) Book review: Kaku, Michio, Quantum Supremacy: How the Quantum Computer Revolution Will Change Everything, unabridged 11-hour audiobook, read by Feodor Chin, Random House Audio, 2023.
[My 3-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku presents a history of quantum computing and discusses its potential applications in terms understandable to non-physicists. The computing discipline's love affair with digital integrated circuits may have come to an end, as their underlying technology can no longer keep pace with the rising demand for computational power, so we have been looking to other technologies to bridge the gap between available and desired capabilities. Quantum computing, with its unfulfilled promises, is one such technology, which continues to produce hype but little in way of concrete results in practically-relevant application domains.
Quantum supremacy refers to experimental demonstration of a quantum computer performing calculations that are beyond the capabilities of classical computers. It may happen one day, but neither Google's nor IBM's claims of having accomplished this feat have passed muster. Kaku repeats much of the hype.
One area in which Kaku paints a particularly rosy picture is that of finding cures for diseases through computational methods. Nearly everyone is aware of the role of viruses and bacteria in human diseases. Another important cause of diseases, that is, misfolded proteins or prions, is not as widely known. Prions cause damage to healthy proteins, thereby propagating the disease within the body. Studying of the various ways in which proteins fold and misfold requires a great deal of computational power that is beyond what classical computers can offer. Prion-caused dementia and other terminal neurodegenerative diseases can benefit potentially benefit from computational attacks enabled by quantum computing.
Kaku's discussion of quantum supremacy isn't for the layperson. It is potentially useful to computing professionals, but many such professionals may resent the lack of details, much redundancy, and excessive hand-waving.
2024/04/22 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Happy Passover to all my Jewish readers! With sincere hope for peace and understanding throughout our fragile world. [Center] Happy Earth Day! Santa Barbarans will be celebrating Mother Earth this coming weekend at Alameda Park. [Right] ChatGPT for Dummies (see the last item below).
(2) A scorching summer: NOAA projects that 2024 will rank among the 10 warmest years on record and gives it a 55% chance of topping 2023 as the warmest year ever.
(3) Book review: Baker, Pam, ChatGPT for Dummies, unabridged 5-hour audiobook, read by Angela Juarez, Tantor Audio, 2023. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This is the first "for dummies" title that I have pursued for my own benefit, rather than to assess and introduce such a book to novices. I must say that I was pleasantly surprised with the depth and breadth of the book. As a Distinguished Professor, I thought I wouldn't be caught dead learning something from a "for dummies" book, but I did learn a lot from Pam Baker's systematic and comprehensive treatment. The book allowed me to sort out and systematize what I had previously learned about ChatGPT from a multitude of articles/videos/talks.
This clear, engaging, and approachable book demystifies the world of conversational AI and introduces readers to the power of ChatGPT, using clear explanations, practical examples, and step-by-step instructions. This book is a valuable resource for anyone interested in exploring the possibilities of conversational AI.
Following is a list of chapters and their very brief summaries in terms of basics, the ethics of using AI-generated content, the potential for bias & misinformation in AI-generated content, and guidelines for using AI responsibly. The book concludes with a chapter on the future of AI. We learn that some disruption is inevitable, but the rewards under proper care and responsible use are monumental.
- Introducing ChatGPT: It's not just another conversational AI tool but the field's gold standard
- Understanding Conversational AI: Insights into NLP, ML, and components of a chatbot system
- Getting Started: From setting up the development environment to accessing the necessary tools & resources
- Designing Conversations: Principles and best practices for creating engaging and effective conversations
- Training Your Chatbot: Data collection & preprocessing steps, and techniques for fine-tuning and optimizing
- Evaluating and Improving Chatbot Performance: Metrics for assessing conversational quality and strategies for enhancing the chatbot’s responses & user experience.
- Deploying Your Chatbot: Hosting options, integration with messaging platforms, and considerations for scaling and maintaining the chatbot's availability.
- Advanced Techniques and Applications: Multilingual support, persona-based conversations, and integrating external APIs to enhance the chatbot’s capabilities.
- Conclusion: A summary of key learnings and the potential of ChatGPT in revolutionizing conversational AI.
I highly recommend this book to novices and experts alike.
2024/04/21 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] World Central Kitchen (see the next item below). [Center & Right] History repeats itself: The Nazis preventing Jews from entering Vienna University in 1939 and Palestine supporters at Columbia University denying access to Jewish students in 2024.
(2) Documentary film screening at Arlington Theater: Oscar-winning director Ron Howard's 2022 "We Feed People" spotlights renowned chef Jose Andres and his nonprofit World Central Kitchen's incredible mission and evolution over a dozen years, from being a scrappy group of grassroots volunteers to becoming one of the most highly regarded humanitarian aid organizations in the disaster relief sector. The film screening was sponsored by UCSB's Arts and Lectures Program.
(3) Know HAMAS, the entity being praised by many student protesters in the US: [It puzzles me that quite a few Iranians, having witnessed the destruction of Iran and its culture by an Islamic regime, want the same for Palestinians.]
The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement (HAMAS), a comprehensive manifesto comprised of 36 separate articles, all of which promote the goal of destroying the State of Israel through Jihad, was issued on August 18, 1988. Excerpts follow.
Goals of HAMAS: "The Islamic Resistance Movement is a distinguished Palestinian movement, whose allegiance is to Allah, and whose way of life is Islam. It strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine." (Article 6)
The exclusive Muslim nature of the area: "The land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf [Holy Possession] consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgment Day. No one can renounce it or any part, or abandon it or any part of it." (Article 11) "Palestine is an Islamic land, ... the Liberation of Palestine is an individual duty for every Muslim wherever he may be." (Article 13)
The call to jihad: "The day the enemies usurp part of Muslim land, Jihad becomes the individual duty of every Muslim. In the face of the Jews' usurpation, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised." (Article 15)
Rejection of a negotiated peace settlement: "[Peace] initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement ... Those conferences are no more than a means to appoint the infidels as arbitrators in the lands of Islam ... There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are but a waste of time, an exercise in futility." (Article 13)
Anti-Semitic incitement: "The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: O Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him." (Article 7)
2024/04/19 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Family cars, over the years (see the next item below). [Center] The lying mullahs: In the aftermath of the 1979 revolution, Iranian women were promised repeatedly that hijab will not become mandatory and that anyone bothering hijabless women on the streets will be punished. [Right] Iran claims that Israel hit it with micro-drones "of the kind we give to our children as toys": They seem to be preparing the public for no response to the Israeli attack. Semi-official reports indicate the use of three large, radar-evading, guided missiles.
(2) Station-wagons vs. SUVs: Some seven decades ago, car manufacturers began catering to the needs of multi-kid families by introducing station-wagons with humongous trunks. With the safety culture of those days, several kids would fit in the trunk. These beautiful and graceful cars were later replaced with minivans, which were safer and could carry extra passengers instead of lots of cargo. Nowadays. Families gravitate toward SUVs, which are much safer (say, in rollovers) but not as roomy. In fact, some SUVs have less interior space than standard sedans.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Colorado enacts a first-of-its-kind privacy law that bans the sale of human brain waves.
- Paris Olympics organizers are preparing for what they deem near-certain cyberattacks this summer.
- The solution to homelessness isn't more court cases: It is more affordable housing.
- Anne Lamott reflects on turning 70.
- Kurdish music: Russian star Zara performs with a dance troupe. [4-minute video]
- My family's early-birthday celebration. [Video of persian piano music, played by my niece]
(4) France's love-hate relationship with science: Last December, France's president made an impassioned plea for supporting research and a major reorganization of the nation's research structure. But only 2 months later, worrisome deficits led to a 10-billion-euro cut in the French budget, including a disproportionate 0.9-billion-euro reduction in allocations to research & higher education. [From a Science magazine editorial, April 19, 2024]
(5) Murderous mullahs: Federal Criminal Court of Argentina has confirmed that both the 1992 attack on the Israeli Embassy and the 1994 AMIA bombing were carried out by Iran-backed groups.
2024/04/18 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] UCSB Summit on AI and Human Creativity (see the last item below). [Center] Shalhoob's opens on Hollister Ave., between Goleta and Santa Barbara, in the location of the former Woody's BBQ, which closed 3 years ago. [Right] Math puzzle: Find the length x in the following diagram.
(2) CNN is reporting a major explosion in Esfahan, believed to have been caused by a ballistic missile. All flights in and out of Tehran, Esfahan, and Shiraz have been cancelled.
(3) Mellichamp Initiative in Mind & Machine Intelligence Summit: AI and Human Creativity (April 18-19, 2024, UCSB Henley Hall): As AI's capabilities to create visual art, music, stories, and videos improve exponentially, we are filled with questions about how AI-generated creativity differs from the human creative process. Where does generative AI fall below humans and where does it exceed human abilities? How can AI be used to potentiate human creativity? Will the massification of generative AI stiffen human creativity? What is the future role of the artist with the proliferation of generative AI? What are the legal framework and challenges in protecting artists' copyrights? This summit tackles the questions above to promote understanding and chart a future course of action.
[Full Summit Program]
What I learned early on: The word "technology" comes from two Greek words, transliterated "techne" and "logos." Techne means art, skill, craft, or the way, manner, or means by which a thing is gained. Logos means word, the utterance by which inward thought is expressed. So, in a way, art is already part of technology.
Second talk: Jennifer Walshe (U. Oxford) made a virtual presentation on her book, 13 Ways of Looking at AI, Art, and Music. "AI is not a singular phenomenon. It is many different things to many different people, a planetary-scale project which manifests for each of us locally in the same way that the climate makes a part of itself known to us through the weather on our street. If we are going to try and think seriously about AI, we need to think on the scale of AI. We need to think like the networks do – in higher dimensions, from multiple positions." [Full text]
Fourth talk: Daphne Ippolito (Carnegie Mellon U.) spoke under the title "Creative Writing with an AI-Powered Writing Assistant: Perspectives from Professional Writers." She described the AI-powered Wordcraft writing assistant and how professional writers reacted to it in the course of a months-long study.
Keynote talk: Ahmad Elgammal spoke under the title "Art in the Age of AI." He traced brief histories of computer-generated and computer-assisted art, outlined ongoing work at Rutgers University's Art & AI Lab, and touched upon unresolved legal issues pertaining to AI-generated art. At the end, a short video about how Beethoven's unfinished 10th Symphony was completed with help from AI was screened.
Final talk (Friday): Pamela Samuelson (UC Berkeley) spoke on "How Copyright Law Conceptualizes Creatuve Expression."
Many attempts at copyrighting AI-generated art have been unsuccessful, because the norm for copyright is substantial involvement of a human (simply issuing a prompt does not constitute substantial involvement). The current policy has precedents that go back to the 1980s, when copyrightability of computer-generated work was hotly debated. For example, machine-generated colorized versions of black-and-white films have been deemed uncopyrightable. On the other hand, current copyright law allows an employer to copyright the work of an employee, which leads some to question why AI isn't viewed as an underling.
2024/04/17 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Talk about Persian rugs (see the next item below). [Top center] Where is this place where elephants drive? [Top right] IEEE Central Coast Section tech talk (see the last item below). [Bottom left & center] Trump's Bible and Disney's production of "The Lyin King." [Bottom right] Surprise, surprise! We have a rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
(2) Today's Haji Baba Club talk: Sophia Sacal (freelancer at Christie's) spoke under the title "The (Epistemological) Warp and Weft of Persian Rugs: How Knowledge is Produced in Western Art History." How do we know what we know about Persian rugs? Knowledge is often produced through and from a Western perspective, leading to what decolonial theorist Ambar Quijano calls "the coloniality of power and knowledge." A revision of art historical sources, such as travelers' journals and connoisseurs' catalogs, will reveal how the Persian rugs' epistemological warp and weft (or the way in which we know what we know) has not been articulated from within, but rather from the outside. We often see photos of Persian rugs with unnamed and unacknowledged women/girls in the frame, as if all Iranian women & girls are interchangeable, whereas other art forms are identified with the artists' names. This calls for decolonialization of knowledge about Persian rugs.
(3) PEN America: In the first half of the 2023-2024 school year, there were more than 4300 book bans across the country — a number that surpassed the entire previous academic year.
(4) Israel's options against Iran: Many analysts advise Israel to "take the win" (its defenses held and there was no loss of life) and remain calm. Others point to significant economic harm due to disruption of activities, flight cancellations, and even GPS malfunctions. Ignoring the attack will embolden Iran and other adversaries, who may think hitting sparsely-populated areas will bring them symbolic victories with no down side.
(5) A piece of the International Space Station crashed through the roof of a house in Florida: This is highly unusual, because such pieces usually burn and vaporize as they re-enter Earth's atmosphere.
(6) Today's IEEE Central Coast Section tech talk: Dr. Ben Mazin (UCSB Physics Dept.) spoke under the title "Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors for Exoplanet Detection and Biophysics."
MKIDs, a fairly mature 20-year-old technology, are superconducting detectors useful across the electromagnetic spectrum and have even been used in particle and other sensing modalities. Their primary advantage over other low-temperature detectors is their inherent frequency-domain multiplexability at GHz frequencies. Room-temperature readouts leveraging commercial software-defined radio components allow researchers to build reasonably affordable and compact systems with tens of thousands of pixels. The talk contained operational principles of MKIDs, a review of their development focusing on the exciting work of the past decade, and a preview of what we can expect in the coming years.
2024/04/15 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Floating settlements are being tried as a potential solution to sea-level rise in vulnerable countries (source: E&T magazine, March-April 2024). [Top center] With college buddies, Faramarz and Farid, celebrating 60 years of friendship (Westwood Village, Los Angeles). [Top right] Falling oil prices seem to have delayed the completion of the Persian Gulf coast railway project (green line on the map) connecting all six Gulf Cooperation Council member states (source: E&T magazine, March-April 2024). [Bottom left] Math challenge: In this infinite tiling pattern, what fraction of the tiles are black? [Bottom center] Visual challenge: Do you see anything and if so, what? [Bottom right] Completed in 1624 in the wake of a newfound Anglo-Scottish unity, the Berwick Old Stone Bridge turns 400 this year (source: E&T magazine, March-April 2024).
(2) Misinformation and disinformation are major problems in this year of global elections, when half of the world's population have a chance to vote. [Source: E&T magazine, March-April 2024]
(3) The Iranian people are abandoned: The mullahs know full well that a retaliatory attack by Israel is likely. Yet they have not informed the public about the risks, nor have they issued directives on how to act in the event of an attack.
(4) In his new memoir, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, Salman Rushdie writes about the 2022 attack that blinded him in one eye and his wife's support through his recovery.
(5) Climate change in action: Northern Kenya is cattle country, but herders in that region are switching from cows to camels to deal with rising temperatures and erratic rainfall.
(6) The standard Rubik's Cube is 3 x 3 x 3: I had seen larger cubes, such as 4 x 4 x 4 and 8 x 8 x 8, but this 22 x 22 x 22 puzzle is the largest ever built. Its movement mechanism is mind-boggling! [Video]
2024/04/13 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Yesterday's UCSB ECE Summit 2024 at the Loma Pelona Center on campus: In addition to faculty talks and student presentations, there was a guest faculty keynote (Rama Chellappa, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor, Johns Hopkins U.) and an industry keynote (Marco Zuliani, Apple Computer's System Intelligence and Machine Learning Sr. Director). [Top center] Here is a Web site that generates Nastaliq script for Persian texts supplied by the user: Other scripts offered by the site, which I mentioned during my Talangor talk on Thursday 4/11, include Shekasteh, Moal'la, and Kufi. [Top right] Iran launches a massive air attack on Israel: The skies between the two countries are virtually devoid of air traffic. My heart goes out to Iranians and Israelis, who are caught between two war-mongering madmen. [Bottom left] Snacks I prepared this morning in anticipation of a rainy day indoors: Now, I am glued to the TV, following breaking news. [Bottom center] Santa Barbara's majestic Granada Theater turns 100. [Bottom right] Facebook memories from Apr. 13 of years past: Quotes and memes.
(2) Avi Wigderson, Herbert H. Maass Professor in the School of Mathematics at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, has been named ACM's Turing Award winner for 2023: He has been a leading figure in computational complexity, algorithms & optimization, randomness & cryptography, parallel & distributed computation, combinatorics, and graph theory.
(3) Canadian-American journalist Robert McNeil [1931-2024] dead at 93: He was a beloved and trusted newsman, who co-anchored the PBS NewsHour for many years. RIP.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Physicist Peter Higgs [1929-2024], of the Higgs boson fame, dead at 94. RIP.
- Nobel Laureate women, 1903-2023. [Slide show]
- Iran's state media use images of Texas fires to claim that missiles hit and destroyed Israeli targets.
- Persian music: Paying tribute to the late singer Viguen with a 7-minute medley of his most-famous songs.
(5) A sample of salaries and prices in Iran, one year before the 1979 Revolution: Teacher's monthly salary, 3500 tomans (~$500); Chelow-kabob, 7 tomans (~$1); Barbari bread 1 toman (~$0.14). [Detailed list]
(6) Only 60% of US students who enrolled in college earned a degree or credential within 8 years of high-school graduation: Of the ~23.000 ninth-graders tracked since 2009, ~74% had enrolled in college at some point, by the time the study concluded in 2021, a drop of ~10% compared with the study's previous iteration.
2024/04/11 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] A beautiful spring day, captured in flowers along my walking path in a neighborhood adjoining Foothill Road. [Top center] As Facebook turns 20, social apps are losing their appeal: Can we do anything to prevent their demise? [Top right] Lucy's world: Fifty years after her discovery, the 3.2M-year-old fossil still reigns as mother of us all. But she now has rivals. [Bottom left] The Mid-Atlantic Ridge: Extending from the Arctic to the tropics, the spectacular underwater mountain range, stretching over 10,000 miles, reaches above sea level in Iceland, creating an impressive landscape of volcanoes, geothermal springs, and geysers. [Bottom center] Tonight's Talangor Group tech talk (see the last item below). [Bottom right] Funeral procession in Tehran for the seven Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps generals killed in Syria.
(2) Women's soccer: In the championship match of SheBelieves Cup, USA prevailed over Canada (just barely). Canada took a first-half lead. In the second half, the US came from behind to take a 2-1 lead, before conceding a penalty kick that tied the score after 90 minutes. The US won the penalty shootout 5-4. [Highlights]
(3) Tonight's Talangor Group talk: Yours truly gave a talk entitled "A Historical Review of Computer-Generated Persian Script." I also gave a brief presentation about the Feb. 16, 2024, opening of Iran Computer Museum, which included the screening of this 13-minute video. A large team of young Iranians were involved in launching the small-scale museum, taking advantage of the extensive collection of systems & gadgets donated by Nasser Ali Saadat and financial help from Hessam Armandehi. The museum has both physical and virtual exhibits, as well as an oral-history collection.
A few years ago, I decided to sit down and document the development of the Persian script in connection with modern technology. The Persian script underwent significant changes with the advent of printing press, typewriters, and computers. I was involved at Tehran's Arya-Mehr/Sharif University of Technology in several early projects on computer-generated Persian script, an effort that went through multiple generations of printing technology, from drum and chain printers through the eventual dominance of dot-matrix technology. My historical reflection resulted in two journal papers, one in Persian and another in English, whose citations and PDF links appear below.
B. Parhami, "Computers and Writing in Persian: A Review of Challenges and Solutions" (in Persian), Iran Namag, Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 3-32, Summer 2019 (1398).
[PDF]
B. Parhami, "Computers and Challenges of Writing in Persian: Explorations at the Intersection of Culture and Technology," Visible Language, Vol. 54, Nos. 1-2, pp. 186-223, April 2020.
[PDF]
In the talk, I outlined certain characteristics of the Persian script that made it difficult for early computer printers to produce high-quality Persian output. A number of band-aid solutions were proposed to adapt printers designed and optimized for the Latin script to the needs of Persian script. Later, dot-matrix printers and displays made the adaptation simpler, although several challenges still remained.
Today, we have Persian print and display outputs of reasonable quality, but text-processing algorithms, particularly if we mix Latin and Persian scripts, still leave us scratching our heads when we encounter silly line-break and formatting errors. [Recording of the talk]
2024/04/08 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Today's solar eclipse across the US: I was walking from home to my class on campus, 11:00-11:50 AM, which included the peak eclipse time of 11:11. I stopped from time to time and put my viewing glasses on to look at the Sun. Only nerds get excited about a partial solar eclipse! Everyone around me went about their business, as if nothing was happening. We Californians will have to wait until 2045 to get a better deal.
(2) Is every number special? Some believe so. Consider the seemingly drab number 1729. Indian mathematician Ramanujan is credited with noticing that it is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two perfect cubes in two different ways:
1729 = 9^3 + 10^3 = 1^3 + 12^3
(3) US insurance companies take drone images of homes, which can result in policyholders being dropped for signs of roof damage, yard debris, overhanging tree branches, and undeclared swimming pools or trampolines.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Putin's mines have been maiming and killing Ukrainian civilians since Russia's invasion began.
- The constant 6174 is named after Indian mathematician D. R. Kaperkar.
- Rail transportation in Bangladesh: Efficiency, yes; Safety, no. [Video]
- When your foreign-born child makes fun of and corrects your immigrant English!
(5) An essay on understanding others' feelings: It examines empathy, including what it is, whether our doctors need more of it, and when too much may not be a good thing.
(6) Open-access journals aren't working as we hoped they would: In retrospect, it should have been obvious that a pay-in-advance publication strategy would motivate publishers to accept much junk science and to underinvest in systems to ensure the long-term availability of the published works. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will require grantees to post as preprints all manuscripts that result from research it funds. It will also stop paying for researchers to publish their papers in journals that charge a fee to make papers free. According to the Foundation, the mandate is needed to accelerate the dissemination of research findings and because too many authors cannot afford publishing fees.
2024/04/07 (Sunday): Today, I offer a course review on human prehistory and two science book reviews.
(1) Course review: Fagan, Brian M., Human Prehistory and the First Civilizations, 36 half-hour lectures in the "Great Courses" series, 2013.
[My 4-star review of this course on GoodReads]
Brian M. Fagan [1936-], Professor of Anthropology at UCSB, has authored two widely-used textbooks: People of the Earth and In the Beginning. His other works include The Rape of the Nile, The Adventure of Archaeology, Time Detectives, and The Little Ice Age. He also edited The Oxford Companion to Archaeology.
At first impression, "human prehistory," defined as the story of human development before the advent of writing, might seem an oxymoron. While it is very difficult to deduce what went on before humans began recording events in writing, there is ample evidence that archaeologists can draw upon to make informed guesses. The fossil record is of course a big help.
In this course, we hear about the footprints of a pair of hominins who walked across a dry riverbed covered with volcanic ash, which preserved the footprints for modern scientists to examine. The footprints tell us not only about the foot size of the species, but also the gait and speed of movement of our ancestors some 4 million years ago, as they strived to adapt to life outside thick forests (change of diet, need for faster movement to hunt or to evade predators). It takes a lot of detective work to extract detailed info from a small collection of evidential material and it takes the skills of a persistent detective to put the puzzle pieces together, but it definitely qualifies as legitimate science.
The first ten lectures of this fascinating course deal with the origins and development of modern humans. The remaining 26 lectures introduce the development of agriculture & states, interaction of societies, and many of the most-significant early civilizations on all continents.
On this Web page, you can find a detailed description of the course, including the titles of the 36 lectures. A short abstract of each lecture is available by clicking on its title.
(2) Book review: Adee, Sally, We Are Electric: Inside the 200-Year Hunt for Our Body's Bioelectric Code, and What the Future Holds, unabridged 10-hour audiobook, read by the author, Hachette Audio, 2023.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Biological terms ending with "-ome" imply a totality: genome, biome, proteome. The subject of this book is electome, that is, the head-to-toe bioelectric signaling system of your body and its 40 trillion cells. The shocking story (pun intended) of bioelectricity, from the 18th century lab of Luigi Galvani, an Italian scientist hunting for what gives animals the spark of life, to DARPA's secretive use of brain zapping to speed up soldiers' sniper training.
Science writer Adee opens the book with a gripping story of her transformation into a stone-cold sharpshooter who eliminated a large number of simulated enemy actors in a desert battle simulation. All it took was a 9-volt battery and a little brain-zapping.
She then takes us on a grand tour of the various ways in which our bodies use electricity to orchestrate our lives. She describes how cells use ion channels to usher charged molecules in and out. And she touches upon new applications that include military training, as described above, and medicine, including cancer treatment, implants, and bioelectric bandages that speed wound-healing.
(3) Book review: Perkowitz, Sidney, Physics: A Very Short Introduction, unabridged 5-hour audiobook, read by Jason Martin, Tantor Audio, 2023. [My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Physics is one of broadest areas of science, so an overview provided in a 140-page pocket-size book is by necessity quite limited. Perkowitz organizes his material into 6 chapters of 20 or so pages each, followed by references and further reading/viewing.
- It all began with the Greeks
- What physics covers and what it doesn't
- How physics works
- Physics applied and extended
- A force in society
- Future Physics: Unanswered questions
It is very helpful to look at a discipline from a big-picture perspective. Questions such as what physicists do, is experimental confirmation really necessary or optional (as today's string-theorists assert), how are small & big physics projects funded, why is physics so popular with government and research-funding agencies, why there aren't more women physicists, why the shift from single-author papers of decades ago to today's norm of dozens or even hundreds of authors, and international collaboration & competition.
2024/04/06 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Today's family outing in Santa Barbara (Reunion Kitchen at the East Beach and the famous Chromatic Gate on Cabrillo Blvd.). [Center] Iranian women's-rights activist Sepideh Qolyian, 32, wrote her second book in prison: The book, a strange combination of prison memoir and baking recipes, is a masterpiece that takes you to the darkest corners of Iranian jails and, at the same time, elevates your spirit by introducing you to incredible women who dance, sing, bake, and act inside prison to defy their tormenters (reported by IranWire). [Right] Dozens of US bridges lack protections against being hit by wayward ships.
(2) A 4.8 earthquake shook New York City and surrounding areas Friday morning: Earthquakes are rare in NYC, with the largest one recorded being a magnitude-5.2 shaker in 1884.
(3) Note ending an e-mail message from a UCSB student: "I really enjoyed ECE 1B with you my freshman year during COVID. I met people working on those puzzles that I've worked with for the rest of school. Thank you."
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The 39th straight month of job growth in the US raises hope that inflation is coming under control. [Chart]
- Dream discovery: A highly concentrated deposit of helium is discovered in northern Minnesota.
- Tuition at some private US colleges is approaching ~$100K per year.
- A Brief History of the Future: Six-part PBS documentary, created by futurist Ari Wallach.
- Islamic Republic's authorities executed 853+ people in 2023, the highest number in eight years.
- Facebook memory from Apr. 6, 2023: On the use of scaffolding for hardware and software systems.
(5) A California man who discovered a back-door planted in a piece of open-source software may have stopped a nasty worldwide cyberattack. [NYT story]
(6) There's so much hype about Monday's solar eclipse: Everyone insists that you shouldn't miss it, but then they tell you not to look at the Sun. How am I supposed to see it if I don't look at the Sun?
(7) US Women prevail 2-1 over Japan in a semifinal match of SheBelieves Soccer Cup: Japan took the lead in minute 1, but the US tied the match before halftime and scored the winning goal on a penalty kick late in the second half. In the final match on Tuesday 4/09, 4:00 PM PDT, USA will play Canada, which prevailed over Brazil in penalty shootout, after a 1-1 draw. [4-minute USA-Japan highlights]
(8) The flow of talent from academia to industry has accelerated: Academic salaries have never been competitive with those of the industry, but the gap has been growing and working conditions at universities have been deteriorating of late.
(9) Final thought for the day: Ayatollah Khamenei says that the Islamic Republic will negotiate with the Devil if it perpetuates the regime's survival. Everyone should get behind and support the regime. Interestingly, every time he mentions the Islamic Republic, he points to himself!
2024/04/04 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Throwback Thursday: The upcoming April 8, 2024, total solar eclipse in the US was predicted in March 1970. [Center] Warmer-than-usual ocean temperatures foretell a daunting hurricane season. [Right] Zoe Schiffer's Extremely Hardcore (see the last item below).
(2) Join NSF during the April 8 solar eclipse to learn about the science of the Sun: Scientists will describe the unique experiments happening during the eclipse. It will all be on YouTube, starting around 11:00 AM PDT.
(3) In defense of shared governance at universities: University of California Academic Senate Chair Jim Steintrager addressed the Board of Regents at the March 20 Joint Meeting of the Regents' Academic and Student Affairs & Compliance and Audit Committees. His remarks begin at the 17:26 mark of this video.
(4) Book review: Schiffer, Zoe, Extremely Hardcore: Inside Elon Musk's Twitter, Portfolio, 2024.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
For many years, Twitter had been defined by the hands-off leadership style of co-founder Jack Dorsey. Twitter's staff spent years trying to protect the platform against impulsive billionaires. Then, trouble arrived when one such billionaire made himself the company's CEO, ending the era of Twitter giving everyone a voice, from Occupy Wall Street to the Arab Spring. Overnight, Twitter went from a company that was short on profits but long on influence to being all about profits and one person's ego.
Santa-Barbara-based journalist Schiffer draws on interviews with 60+ employees, internal documents, court filings, and congressional testimony to produce an account of Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter and the ensuing chaos. She examines the effects of the volatile entrepreneur's takeover on the social media company and its thousands of employees (resignations, firings, etc.).
Beginning in January 2022, Musk began accumulating Twitter shares. A few months later, he joined the board and made an offer to purchase the business. Suits and countersuits slowed the process, which finally ended in the fall of that year, when Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion. Intent on cutting costs, Musk instituted massive layoffs, including engineers, content managers, and root password holders (critical to the company's operations), actions that weakened morale and caused advertising revenue to nose-dive.
Schiffer concedes that Musk's product ideas were reasonable, "but they were all over the map. In addition to relaunching Twitter Blue, he was exploring a payments platform, long-form video, long-form tweets, and encrypted direct messages." Since his childhood, "Musk had harbored a belief that he was destined to have a great impact on the world." His track record confirms that he is capable of having impact, but not necessarily that the impact will be positive in all cases.
There is general agreement in many different reviews of the book that Schiffer has done a remarkable job of researching her subject, but she leaves several important questions unanswered. Here are some examples. Is Twitter doomed to failure under Musk's leadership? Technical failures are well-described, but what about Musk's free-speech hypocrisy? She certainly has opinions on these questions, given her long-term reporting on Twitter, but she does not share her views with the book's readers.
For those who don't care for a book-size report with lots of details, this New York Magazine article by the author, Casey Newton, and Alex Heath might be considered a good substitute.
2024/04/03 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Images from Taiwan's 7.4-magnitude shaker: Reportedly, 9 people have died in this strongest earthquake in 25 years. The relatively low fatality figure is a testament to the country's building technology and rescue efforts. [Top center] About 100,000 live salmon spilled off a truck in Oregon, but most survived by flopping into a nearby creek. They are heading toward the ocean. [Top right] Socrates Think Talk talk (see the last item below). [Bottom left & center] Massive mosques to be erected at all city parks in Tehran: This is the Iranian mullahs' plan to keep an eye on people who use parks for jogging, group-exercise, and social gatherings. These architectural drawings show the mosque planned for Gheitarieh Park in northern Tehran. [Bottom right] New Yorker cartoon of the day: "Spring cleaning is just replacing the winter clothes on this chair with lighter, more colorful ones."
(2) UCSB Plous Lecture Honor: Dr. Charmaine Chua, Assistant Professor in the Department of Global Studies, will give the 2023-2024 Harold J. Plous Award Lecture on Thursday, April 11, 4:00 PM, at the Mosher Alumni House. Her lecture is entitled "Breaking Our (Supply) Chains: Anti-colonial Resistance in a Just-In-Time World."
(3) Tonight's Socrates Think Tank talk: Dr. Kamran Malek (obstetrics & gynecology) spoke under the title "Stem Cell, Gene Therapy: What Is on the Horizon?" There were ~110 attendees.
Dr. Malek indicated that today's three hottest topics in healthcare are stem cells, gene therapy, and the use of AI. So, he structured his talk into three sections, with Q&A at the end of each section.
Stem cells are undifferentiated cells that can turn into any specialized cells, but as they divide, they gradually become more limited in their adaptation capabilities. Damaged or improperly functioning cells can be removed and stem cells sent to replace them. Medical ethics dictates that stem cells be used to replace other cells, not to create an embryo, for example.
The human genome map, developed a few years ago, catalogs all of our genes. The goal of gene therapy is to replace a defective gene with a healthy one that is mounted on a viral vector. The defective gene is first silenced by targeted use of special enzymes. Once silenced, a healthy gene takes over and replaces it. This is the idea behind the CRISPR technology, which earned its co-inventors, Biochemist Jennifer Doudna and microbiologist Emmanuelle Charpentier, a Nobel Prize in 2020.
I could not stay for the third part of the talk due to prior commitments.
2024/04/01 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] CACM cover feature, April 2024: In an article entitled "The Science of Detecting LLM-Generated Text," Ruixiang Tang, Yu-Neng Chuang, and Xia Hu discuss the many approaches to mitigating the potential misuse of LLMs through automatic detection. [Center] Natural intelligence: Ants break down the grains & seeds they collect for winter into halves to keep them from germinating even through rain and the most-perfect germinating conditions. Amazingly, ants break down coriander seeds into four pieces, because a coriander seed will still germinate after being divided into two. [Right] Heavenly symmetry: Photo or painting?
(2) Happy first day of April: April Fool's Day is named after Englishman Charles April. He was easily fooled, so he lost the fortune his father left him. His wife divorced him after getting tired of his foolishness. He believed every fake story he read, as you are doing now ...
(3) Vanishing structures of rural America: Vermont-based photographer Jim Westphalen honors the long histories of decaying structures that are in danger of vanishing without a trace, along with generations of families that lived and worked in them.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- A temporary shipping route for barges and tugboats to be opened around the Baltimore bridge wreckage.
- Havana Syndrome: How Russia targets high-level American officials worldwide with a secret weapon.
- With Daniel Craig, the fifth Bond, out, who should play the title role in the highly-profitable franchise?
- Show that the area of a quadrangle with side lengths a, b, c, d does not exceed (1/16)(a + b + c + d)^2.
(5) Harvard removes human skin from the binding of a 19th-century book in its collection: The book, Des Destinees de L'ame, meaning Destinies of the Soul, was written by Arsene Houssaye, a French novelist and poet, in the early 1880s. The printed text was given to a physician, Ludovic Bouland, who bound the book with skin he took without consent from the body of a deceased female patient in a hospital where he worked.
(6) How to comment on social media (satire): "Do not read the whole original post or what it links to, which will dilute the purity of your response … Listening/reading delays your reaction time, and as with other sports, speed is of the essence." ~ Rebecca Solnit
(7) Shahram Nazeri to be awarded the 14th Bita Prize for Persian Arts: Nazeri is an award-winning musician and acclaimed composer. As a young artist, he was well-versed in traditional vocal styles but eager to discover new melodies and spaces, drawing inspiration from Kurdish and other Iranian ethnic musical traditions. In his mastery of Iran's grand epic Shahnameh, and deep immersion in the poetry of Rumi, he has had the unique role of bridging the heights of Iranian epic and mystical traditions. He has been no less a creative pioneer in using masterpieces of modernist Persian poetry from poets like Nima and Akhavan to create pieces that brilliantly fuse tradition and modernity in Iran. [Sample musical performance]
2024/03/30 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Right] Rolling some Persian-style dolmas (dolmehs) to help my daughter. [Center] Where have all the peace symbols gone? (see the last item below).
(2) Iranian Kurds take Nowruz celebration seriously, with dancing and other festivities: The joyless Islamic Republic officials prefer religious mourning to any display of life and joy, so they have summoned many of the organizers to court. [Video 1] [Video 2] [Video 3]
(3) Quote of the day: "People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things." ~ Steve Jobs
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Israeli forces create a "Google Maps" of threats in Gaza by using data from sensors and intelligence feeds.
- Electric power use by data centers to increase six-fold over the next decade.
- World's largest inflatable theme park is coming to Santa Barbara, April 26-28, 2024.
[Tweet, with photo]
- How Henry E. Warren's 1916 clock enabled the power grid by regulating the generated power's frequency.
- Linda Doyle shatters Ireland's academic glass ceiling by becoming Trinity College's first female provost.
(5) Research universities and hospitals push back on a proposal by Office of Research Integrity (ORI) to increase oversight of investigations into fraud and plagiarism.
(6) The war at Stanford (and other college campuses): A Stanford sophomore had to change his discussion section for a CS course when the TA leading it asserted that he wanted Joe Biden killed.
(7) The end of Boston Market: Founded in 1985 and expanding to 1200 stores in the 1990s, the casual-healthy food joint is on its way out, with only 27 stores remaining nationwide.
(8) Colleges/schools of AI are sprouting nationwide: In some cases, combined AI/data-science academic units are being formed. In a way, this is inevitable. Successful programs with a lot of student interest and funding tend to go their own way. My worries stem from the fact that once AI is cut off from its CS & CE roots, fundamental scientific progress may be overshadowed by sexy devices & apps that bring in funding from the government and industry. What do you think?
(9) Final thought for the day: Have we given up on peace? When was the last time you noticed the peace symbol on a banner or saw someone flash the two-finger version of it? Bringing back the peace symbol requires that we start wishing health & prosperity on our foes, instead of death & misfortune.
2024/03/28 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] My new graduate seminar, ECE 594BB, at UCSB (see the next item below). [Top center] What if we built a really big computer? I'm not referring to a warehouse-size supercomputer, which we already have, but a planet-scale machine. What are the challenges of building a planet-scale computer of the kind imagined by Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and what uses can we envision for such a machine? [Top right] A mosque in every city park: This is Tehran Mayor's renewed pledge, after seemingly retreating in the face of broad opposition to cutting down of trees and reduction of public spaces. [Bottom left & center] Today's food creations: A hearty chicken & vegetables soup (put together from everything we had in the fridge) and a Shirazi salad. [Bottom right] You have likely seen this method of protecting highway bridge columns from collisions: Why aren't there similar mechanisms for bridges over waterways? Granted, the Highway method is in part to protect drivers, but still, it would make sense along waterways. See also the last item below.
(2) My new UCSB course on the technical aspects of democracy: I will be designing and teaching a new ECE 594 graduate seminar entitled "Mathematical, Algorithmic, and Engineering Aspects of Democratic Elections," to be offered during fall 2024. Preparing for the course and possibly recording its lectures will be done over the summer. I will update you on my work's progress with occasional social-media posts.
(3) IEEE ethics rules lead to the suspension of Chinese Professor Peng Zhang for harassment: The case is fairly old, but the conclusions and action of IEEE's Ethics and Member Conduct Committee were announced in the March 2024 issue of IEEE Spectrum magazine.
(4) Unfortunately, the danger of Joe Biden losing to Donald Trump exists and cannot be wished away: All the Democrats can do is to bring all hands on deck and ensure broad participation.
()5 Final thought for the day: Ships should not collide with bridges and bridges should not collapse if there is a collision. Simple, huh? Not so fast! We are told that investigating the collapse of Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge and the cargo-ship failure that caused it could take years. By then, the incident will be forgotten and the urgency of action will be gone. Remember January 6?
2024/03/26 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Center] The collapse of a bridge in Baltimore, MD (see the next item below). [Right] The disappearing island: In the span of a human lifetime, the majority of Nyangai's land has been washed away, and most of its population has fled. Within a few years, the island may disappear altogether.
(2) Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge collapses after a large cargo ship collides with it: Search and rescue operations are complicated by high winds and ice-cold waters. Engineers are scratching their heads in the aftermath. Huge cargo & cruise ships threaten many bridges that have not been built to withstand their impact. The collapse of the entire Francis Scott Key Bridge rather than one of its spans indicates an urgent need to revisit bridge design. Also, new ship designs, so that vessels are not totally incapacitated by loss of power, should be extensively discussed. [Maps & photos]
(3) Total Solar eclipse happens roughly once every 366 years in the same spot on Earth: Teachers in areas of totality or near-totality on April 8, 2024, plan to use the spectacle as a learning tool, hoping to get children and their parents excited about science.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Qatari royal invested about $50 million in pro-Trump network Newsmax.
- Hamas terrorists meet with Terrorist-in-Chief Ali Khamenei in Tehran. [Tweet, with photo]
- Communications of the ACM, a premier computing journal, becomes an open-access, Web-first publication.
- Snippets from a major musical concert in Tehran, sponsored by Iran's National TV, 1977. [Video]
(5) Is artificial intelligence (AI) the new data science? A few years ago, claims that "big data" will solve all of our problems were front-page headlines. Many opportunists became data scientists overnight and were hired by new and established companies who wanted to erect a stand for themselves in the data-science marketplace. Now, suddenly, the number of AI experts has multiplied, with many overnight conversions from other specialties. Everyone is giving lectures on AI, painting rosy pictures that ensure their continued employment and re-invitation to speak. Brace for major downsizing in the industry to get rid of all the pretend AI experts!
2024/03/25 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] The entire universe in a log-log chart (see the next item below). [Center] A new word game from New York Times: A theme word starts at one of the letters and traces a path by downward, upward, leftward, rightward, or any diagonal movement (e.g., TIME at the upper-left corner). (The solution) [Right] The Greatest Capitalist Who Ever Lived (see the last item below).
(2) There is a long pedagogical tradition in physics of putting everything into one log-log plot. In their October 1, 2023, American J. Physics paper, Charles H. Lineweaver and Vihan M. Patel provide an overview of the history of the universe and the sequence of composite objects (e.g., protons, planets, galaxies) that condensed out of the background as the universe expanded and cooled.
(3) Book review: McElvenny, Ralph Watson and Marc Wortman, The Greatest Capitalist Who Ever Lived, unabridged 17-hour audiobook, read by Donald Corren, PublicAffairs, 2023.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Before Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Elon Musk, there was IBM's Thomas Watson Jr. [1914-1993]. This book is a biography of the man who oversaw the transformation of IBM, originally specializing in electromechanical business-machines, into a digital-computing behemoth, creating a company whose name was synonymous with computers for several decades. Tom Watson Jr.'s success at IBM may have been at least in part due to the rivalry with and rebellion against his father. When Watson Jr. appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1955, a marketing triumph for the company, the old man was resentful.
Tom Watson Jr. began life as an angry and often depressed young boy. Alternately indulged (he wore a jacket & tie at age 9 and as a teen, was supplied with his own car, a sailboat, and a monthly allowance worth $7000 in today's money) and disciplined by his domineering and emotionally-distant father, Watson Jr. predictably rebelled, yet he managed to create the bluest of the blue-chip companies. He was a mediocre student, who barely earned his high-school diploma and couldn't get into colleges of his choice. His father eventually got him into Brown University.
Tom Watson Sr. saw IBM's business as that of tabulating machines, which were quite profitable, resisting the suggestion that the company should invest on and move into the computer business. In 1964, under Watson Jr.'s leadership, IBM unveiled a series of computers known as System/360, revolutionizing the field of computer architecture and establishing IBM as a dominating and hip computer company. Until then, computers, even those built by the same manufacturer, were incompatible, causing a user who wanted to upgrade to a larger system to start from scratch and do a significant amount of re-programming and application adaptation.
System/360 computers, which ranged from small business machines to the largest supercomputer of the day, were upward-compatible, allowing programs developed for smaller systems to run on the larger ones with only slight changes. This was a major technical achievement and also a smart business strategy. It motivated customers who needed larger computers because of expansion of their data-processing needs to stay with IBM; a clever way of locking the customers in without facing anti-trust scrutiny. It also provided software developers a larger market and spurred innovations in the software industry.
Following Watson Sr.'s passing in 1956, Watson Jr. assumed the dual roles of President and CEO at IBM, leading the company to new heights by focusing on its computer business, rather than the electromechanical punched-card systems that were his father's favorites. Watson Jr. stepped down from his positions at IBM in 1971 due to health reasons, but he continued to be active in public service and diplomacy.
One aim of the authors is to exonerate IBM from allegations of cooperating with the Nazi regime in Germany. They claim that Watson Sr. cut all ties with Hitler before the US entered World War II and his company subsequently aided the US war effort. The authors also bust the myth that Bill Gates skunked IBM by developing MS-DOS as the industry-standard operating system, noting that IBM would have faced antitrust trouble had it required a proprietary system.
Both Watson Sr. and Watson Jr. treated IBM, a public company, as family property, even though they never owned more than 5% of its stock. This attitude led to Watson Jr.'s rare mistake of appointing his totally-unqualified, alcoholic brother, Dick, as CEO, an act that led to the System/360 project going into a tailspin and forcing Dick's removal.
One should read this book with the awareness that one of the authors is Watson Jr.'s grandson. This family connection does allow closer scrutiny of the family dynamics, but it seems to have shaped the identification of heroes (Watson Jr. and his supporters & soothsayers) and villains (Watson Jr.'s foes, particularly T. Vincent Learson, who eventually replaced Dick and saved the System/360 endeavor).
2024/03/24 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Iranian singer/songwriter Faramarz Aslani (1954-2024) dead at 69: He was a beloved musician, best-known for composing and performing "Ageh Yeh Rooz." RIP. [Top center] US population growth and thus GDP improvement over the rest of this century depends on immigration policies (NYT chart). [Top right] Digital dissection of museum animals: That's the goal of openVertebrate, a project involving 18 institutions that has spent the past five years creating 3D reconstructions of museum specimens, which are now available freely online (from Nature Journal, March 22, 2024). [Middle left & center] I have updated the Web pages for my spring 2024 courses, a 1-unit freshman seminar, ECE 1B, and a graduate course on computer arithmetic, ECE 252B. Recorded lectures for both courses are available through the Web pages for anyone interested to follow along. [Middle right] A genetic cause of male mate preference: A gene for mate preference has been shared between hybridizing butterfly species, according to the cover feature of Science magazine, issue of March 22, 2024. [Bottom row] Family outing at Balboa Park in Los Angeles on Sunday, preceded by a house-warming party for my niece on Saturday (photos), and followed by an enjoyable luch at Denj Restaurant (images) in Woodland Hills.
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- ISIS responsible for attack on Moscow music hall: 60+ [update: 130+] dead, scores more injured.
- Apple sued by the US government for its iPhone monopoly, which hurts consumers and competitors.
- US-led UN Security Council resolution for ceasefire in Gaza is vetoed by China and Russia.
- Men's soccer: USA prevailed over Mexico 2-0 in the championship match of the CONCACAF Nations Cup.
- Intel to spend ~$20 billion to revamp chips manufacturing capabilities with support from the CHIPS Act.
- Breakdown of spending in America's $1.2 trillion infrastructure investment.
[Tweet, with chart]
- UCSB Interactive Learning Pavilion honored with "US Building of the Year" Award. [Tweet with photo]
- Is the entire observable universe inside a black hole? Black-hole cosmology advances this theory.
- How are extremely heavy weights and massive forces measured? This video tells you all about it.
- Tesla's most-profitable business isn't selling electric cars: It is installing energy-storage packs.
- Fishing skills on display. [3-minute video]
- Facebook memories from Mar. 22 of years past: An Amy Leach quote and a defense of video games.
2024/03/22 (Friday): Today, I present three book reviews on the progress and philosophy of science.
(1) Book review: Penrose, Roger (with Abner Shimony, Nancy Cartwright, & Stephen Hawking; ed. by Malcolm Longair), The Large, the Small, and the Human Mind, Cambridge U. Press, Canto Edition, 2000.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Following a foreword by Malcolm Longair and a preface to the Canto Edition, The book unfolds in seven chapters and two appendices, with Chapters 1-3 written by Roger Penrose, Chapters 4-6 contributed by the three co-authors who criticize Penrose's ideas, and Chapter 7 containing a response by Penrose.
Chapter 1. Space-time and cosmology (the big)
Chapter 2. The mysteries of quantum physics (the small)
Chapter 3. Physics and the mind (the human mind)
Chapter 4. On mentality, quantum mechanics, and actualization of potentialities
Chapter 5. Why physics?
Chapter 6. The objections of an unashamed Reductionist
Chapter 7. Response by Roger Penrose
Appendix 1. Goodstein's theorem and mathematical thinking
Appendix 2. Experiments to test gravitationally induced state reductions
This is an enlightening book that can benefit anyone in search of the truth about science and its relationship with philosophy.
(2) Book review: Rovelli, Carlo, Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity, unabridged 6-hour audiobook, read by Roy McMillan, Penguin Audio, 2017. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
In this volume, Carlo Rovelli, the author of million-selling Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, has produced an accessible book on quantum gravity, a leading-edge area of research in which he works. The book was published in Italy in 2014 and was translated later, so it is coming to English-language readers after his later book, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics.
Rovelli begins by reviewing what humans knew about science in ancient Rome, particularly through important musings of Democritus, whose works unfortunately did not survive owing to the Church's objection. Democritus postulated the existence of tiny building blocks, or atoms, rejecting the notion that matter is infinitely divisible. Other ideas were contributed by Plato and Aristotle, who perceived mathematics as a tool for understanding the universe.
Hundreds of years later, Ptolemy presented formulas to calculate the movements of planets and, thus, predicting their future positions. It then took 1000+ years for Galileo to bring experimentation to science, thus starting the modern scientific tradition. Copernicus revolutionized astronomy by showing that celestial calculations become more accurate if we consider the Sun as the center of our Solar System. Newton laid out the foundations of classical mechanics and formulated the law of universal gravity. Faraday and Maxwell contributed further revolutionary advances.
Then came Albert Einstein, who in his mid-20s published four groundbreaking papers on the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, special theory of relativity, and the equivalence of mass & energy. Ten years later, he proposed a general theory of relativity, which incorporated gravitation. Einstein's contemporaries, Max Born, Werner Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli, Niels Bohr, and Erwin Schrodinger, developed quantum mechanics, thus creating a quest among physicists to devise a theory that unifies them, what is sometimes referred to as the theory of everything. Rovelli pays homage to string theory, but he belongs to a rival school known as loop quantum gravity, which predicts that space is not a continuum but is formed of "atoms of space."
Rovelli tries to bridge the divide between science and art, opining that, "Our culture is foolish to keep science and poetry separated." Lucretius's long philosophical poem "On the Nature of Things" celebrates the mysteries of the natural world, while foreseeing much of contemporary physics. Praising poetic approaches to science and dissing our lust for certainty, which is never offered by science, Rovelli takes a swipe at atheists like Richard Dawkins, labeling them just as prejudiced and intolerant as those they criticize. He opines that such people have no better idea of how the world really works than those they put down.
In her review of Reality Is Not What It Seems, Lisa Randall, Professor of Theoretical Particle Physics at Harvard University, faults Rovelli for occasionally trivializing or oversimplifying, worrying that the approach of turning equations into poetry is akin to feeding the readers enticing junk food, which "though tasty, isn't always as nourishing and sustaining as one might have hoped."
(3) Book review: Rouse Ball, W. W., A Short Account of the History of Mathematics, abridged 31-minute audiobook, read by Tony Shalhoub, Audible, 2020. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This short audiobook belongs to the Audible Sleep Collection, audio programs "created to invite relaxation and sleep." It tells the story of how Ionian Greeks formalized the study of mathematics more than five centuries BCE based on the teachings of ancient Egyptians and Phoenicians, outstripping their former teachers. Much of ancient math was practically oriented, with little abstraction. The development of arithmetic and geometry are discussed, but astronomy is deemed to be outside the scope of this brief history.
2024/03/21 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Center] My mom would have been 95 today: Her favorite photo and a page from her diary. Happy birthday! And happy new year! [Right] IEEE CCS tech talk (see the last item below).
(2) European Union legislators approved the AI Act on March 13, 2024: It will be enacted into law in phases later this year. Non-EU countries including the UK cannot ignore it. As with GDPR rules, the Act includes proposed regulations that organizations will need to comply with, in order to do business with the EU.
(3) Netflix adapts Liu Cixin's beloved sci-fi trilogy 3 Body Problem: Hailed as an audacious feat of engineering, the series begins in the 1960s China during the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution. Having read one of Liu Cixin's books, I recommend the books and the Netflix series to all science buffs.
(4) Last night's IEEE Central Coast Section tech talk: Dr. Philip Lubin (UCSB Physics Dept.) spoke under the title "Planetary Defense Using Hypervelocity Penetrators."
Planetary defense refers to protecting Earth from near-Earth space objects, mostly asteroids but occasionally comets, which can create major loss of life, up to and including widespread extinction. Each year, we can expect impact from an asteroid several meters in diameter, harboring impact energy on the order of 0.01 megatons of TNT. Over a lifetime, asteroid size of 10s of meters and impact energy of 1 megaton can be expected. As the accompanying chart shows, once every million years, asteroid diameter on the order of 1000 meters and explosive energy of ~1000 gigatons might be expected. This energy is millions of times greater than the destructive power of the first atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
So, even though cataclysmic events are rare, their severity warrants preparing appropriate defenses. Assuming an object on a collision course with Earth has been identified, defense startegies include deflection (usable when there is sufficiently advance warning) and pulverization (usable in both long- and short-warning situations). Dr. Lubin described his academia/NASA/national-labs/private-space team's work on the use of hypervelocity kinetic penetrators that pulverize or disassamble an asteroid or small comet. Studies have shown the method's effectiveness against asteroids in the 20-1000m diameter class. This was demonstrated during the talk by screening simulation videos. Once an asteroid has been broken up, the numerous tiny pieces created either miss the Earth or burn up in Earth's atmosphere.
2024/03/19 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Reflections on my two-day trip to Santa Catalina Island: Located off the California coast, southwest of Long Beach, the tourist destination Avalon, near the Island's southeastern tip, is easily accessible by a 70-minute ferry ride. Having lived in Southern California for 40 years, 4 years as a grad student at UCLA and 36 years as a professor at UCSB, visiting Catalina was on my bucket list, which is now checked off! For would-be visitors: If you live close to Long Beach, I recommend a day-trip to Catalina. If you aren't into shopping, activities are rather limited. There is a casino (which I didn't visit), swimming (for those who enjoy freezing water), kayaking (1-minute video), snorkeling, and a semi-submarine ride during which you get to see lots of fish & kelp.
(2) The government-shutdown game: US lawmakers create the drama of a looming shutdown so that when an agreement is reached and there is no shutdown, the public feels like they have accomplished something!
(3) Leaders of some other countries during Vladimir Putin's extended reign in Russia. More will be added over the next six years! [List]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Top-earning majors within 5 years of graduation: Computer eng. tops the list, with CS in third position.
- From "The Angry Grammarian": "The Comma with Too Many Names" & "Lie with Me and Lay Me."
- How a stupid dare after drinking alcohol paralyzed and later killed a young man. [Video]
- Math challenge: What is the limit as x tends to infinity of the xth root of x?
- Dawn Baillie makes museum-worthy movie posters that capture the film's essence in one frame.
(5) NSF hosts an educational livestream on YouTube during the April 8, 2024, total solar eclipse: During the program, scientists explore some of the high-tech facilities they use, including the NSF Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, the largest solar telescope in the world.
(6) According to The Atlantic, the number of Stanford U. seniors in computer science has more than doubled to 18% over the last decade. In the same time period, the rate went up from 23% to 42% at MIT.
(7) The latest video message from the Iranian Nobel Laureate Narges Mohammadi: The brutality of Iran's Islamic regime isn't a sign of its strength but springs from extreme weakness.
(8) Science & math can make you rich in the market of stocks and options: Be aware, though, that the brilliant physicist & mathematician Isaac Newton was a lousy investor!
(9) This Persian verse is attributed to Mojgan Eftekhari, the mother of Mahsa Amini, the young women whose death while in the custody of Iran's morality police triggered the #WomanLifeFreedom Revolution
2024/03/18 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Our outdoors haft-seen for Nowruz 1403: Awaiting the spring equinox (saal-tahveel) on Tuesday, March 19, 2024, 8:06:26 PM PT (Wednesday, March 20, 6:36:26 AM Tehran time). [Center] My latest Nowruz poem and its recitatin (see the next item below). [Right] Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Fooled by Randomness (see the last item below).
(2) My latest Nowruz poem: Every year since 2002, I have composed a cheerful Persian poem to welcome the bliss of Nowruz and the beauty of spring. Here is my poem for 2024 (Persian New Year 1403). Iranian people have suffered for many decades under the brutal Islamic regime, yet they remain as hopeful as ever that the spell will be broken one day soon, allowing them to discard the mullahs' imposed culture of mourning, sorrow, and martyrdom in favor of Iranian cultural elements of music, poetry, arts, and year-round joyous festivals.
A rough English translation follows:
Clean out your home for a momentous celebration
Wear the freshest clothes, a new season is upon us
Unroll the Nowruz spread in homes near and far
Renew your loyalties, hope and promise are here
The spring breeze is blowing from the mountainside
Streams are flowing, the fields have turned green
The hills and plains teem with fragrance and color
Enmity has disappeared, love and hope now rule
It is time for joy, passion, laughter, and open arms
Pale faces have turned red from the joy of Nowruz
P.S.: Many of my previous Nowruz poems are available on my personal poetry page.
(3) Book review: Taleb, Nassim Nicholas, Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets, unabridged 10-hour audiobook, read by Joe Ochman, revised & expanded 2nd ed., Random House Audio, 2019. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
We tend to credit skill or talent for enormous success. While skill or talent can put you on the path to moderate success, much luck is needed for outsize wealth and lasting fame. The latter result from luck, a combination of a fortunate rare event and a lack of negative rare events. The path to fortune and fame is by and large a random walk.
Former options trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb examines the outsized role luck plays in success. While cited examples are mostly from what Taleb has experienced in the world of investing, he makes it clear that his principles are applicable to any field ruled by unpredictability. Economics and politics are prime alternate examples, with publishing and filmmaking not too far behind.
Taleb also addresses the problem of why people do not understand luck and how we can develop awareness of randomness and accommodate it in our lives. The ignorance of randomness has an asymmetric manifestation. Most people attribute their successes to talent and skill, whereas they view their failures as influenced by random events. In other words, I picked a highly profitable stock because I am good at recognizing value, but my stocks that tanked did so due to chance events beyond my control.
There are professions and fields where chance has little or no influence. Dentistry is Taleb's favorite example, where success is built on perseverance and skill, with a pinch of luck. While some dentists are wealthier than others, the difference is nowhere close to that of wealthy and barely-surviving stock traders.
A factor that leads to our being fooled by randomness is survivorship bias. We see examples of people who have thrived in a particular industry (a writer who land a movie contract or an investor who strikes it rich), and then inappropriately extrapolate to the expectation of wild success for anyone. We don't see, and thus forget about, the writer who didn't produce a best-seller or the investor who lost it all in an ill-advised trade. Looking at "invisible" alternatives allows us to better assess the influence of luck.
We are actually quite good at evaluating probabilities in situations with well-defined parameters, like playing Russian roulette for $50 million by shooting a gun loaded with one real bullet and five empty chambers at our head. but when chance events are beyond our logical assessment, because they are ill-defined or involve too many parameters, we do less well.
As they say in the field of investing, past performance is no guarantee for future gains. There are rare events that nobody has experienced and thus do not show up in the past record. A rare negative event in the stock market can wipe out the gains from years of moderate success. These rare events or "black swans," are, by definition, unpredictable because they don't follow any rules. Risk assessment is impossible for unpredictable events.
2024/03/16 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] A retired American diplomat is the first person to document 10,000 different bird sightings. His record-setting find: An orange-tufted spiderhunter. [Center] This evening's sunset walk to Coal Oil Point Beach in Goleta. [Right] Don't tread on my gun & heart-attack burger: RNC, under Trumpian management, unveils its new Statue of Liberty.
(2) Noteworthy elements of a metro-car video in Tehran: Widespread musical talent among Iranians, despite various prohibitions, passengers daring to cheer on & sing along, and dismissal of mandatory hijab laws.
(3) Over the past four decades, spring has arrived earlier and earlier in the Continental US: Up to four weeks earlier in much of the country and a bit later in small areas, mostly in the Midwest. [Tweet, with infographic]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- UN report implicates Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in crimes against humanity.
- Iranian women continue to defy hardline clerics, despite heightened threats of fines and imprisonment.
- Misogynistic posts and comments are not okay, even against women supporters of Iran's Islamic regime.
- Math challenge: If for nonzero x, we have f(1/(1 + x)) + f((x + 1)/x) = x, what is f(1/2)?
(5) Quote of the day: "Nothing in life is to be feared; it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less." ~ Marie Curie
(6) We tend to think of the Worldwide Web as the most-important fruit of the age of digital connectivity: But Wikipedia, an invaluable free resource, may be just as important.
(7) Iran's former "moderate" FM Javad Zarif criticizes the "hardliners": I feel no sympathy for his being sidelined, because during his tenure as foreign minister, he defended Iran's horrible human rights record, dismissed people's legitimate demands, and generally deferred to the Supreme Leader on matters big & small.
(8) On police officers sexually assaulting children: The stories keep coming!
"Former Lewisville police officer sentenced for sexually assaulting a child"
"Ex-Chicago cop sentenced to 25 years in sex trafficking of young girls"
"Sex abuse victim of former LVMPD officer: 'I was turned into a human pet'"
It is sickening that some of our supposed protectors abuse their positions of power & public trust! There is a Persian saying: "We use salt to prevent food from becoming rotten. God help us when the salt goes rotten!"
(9) Viruses, bacteria, and prions: Nearly everyone is aware of the role of viruses and bacteria in human diseases. From a book I am reading (Michio Kaku's Quantum Supremacy), I learned about another important cause of diseases, that is, misfolded proteins or prions. Misfolded proteins cause damage to healthy proteins, thereby propagating the disease within the body. Research on protein folding and quantum computing, that can provide the computational power to advance this area of research, raises hopes of dealing with prion-caused dementia and other terminal neurodegenerative diseases.
2024/03/15 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] AI visualizations (see the next item below). [Center] Last night's Talangor Group talk (see the last item below). [Right] Talk on Iranian polymath Qutb al-Din Shirazi (see item 3 below).
(2) AI-visualized technical rooms for each decade, from 1980 to 2050: Here are some of the images.
On my Facebook post of these images, a perceptive friend noted the total absence of women in all cases.
I responded thus: Excellent observation! This is why we worry about human biases (in this case, those of the designers of AI systems) finding their way into programs and algorithms. We have a long way to go to remove such biases from people and, indirectly, from the algorithms they develop.
(3) Today's Stanford University webinar: Dr. Kaveh Niazi (Stanford Online High School) talked under the title "Qutb al-Din Shirazi and His Observations on Ptolemy's Lunar Model."
Qutb al-Din Shirazi [1235-1311 CE], a renowned student of Khwaja Nasir al-Din Tusi, completed in 1282 CE his astronomical text Ikhtiyarat-i Muzaffari, a richly-detailed work composed in Persian, which covers much of the material appearing in his 1281 Arabic text Nihayat al-Idrak fi Dirayat al-Aflak. Intriguingly, the Persian book includes material that is missing from its companion. One such passage treats the concept of the prosneusis point as defined for the Ptolemaic lunar model in the Almagest. An examination of Shirazi's discussion of the prosneusis point offers a window to his approach to theoretical astronomy, while also highlighting his approach to the authoring of technical texts for astronomy students.
(4) Last night's Talangor Group Talk: Hooshyar Afsar(zadeh), journalist & social-justice activist, spoke under the title "Haji Firooz and Today's World." Before the main talk, Dr. Reza Toossi made a short presentation in celebration of pi Day. Among interesting observations offered by Dr. Toossi was the fact that perhaps 7/22 should be designated as pi Day, given that the approximation 22/7 is closer to the real value of pi than 3.14. Note that in some date notations, the day number is written before the month number (such as 22/7/2024). There were ~80 attendees.
Haji Firooz is a subject dear to my heart, so let me begin my report with a long introduction about my own views. I have written many times about Haji Firooz being a racist symbol, although most Iranians vehemently deny that they, or Iranians as a whole, harbor racist sentiments.
On March 20, 2014, I criticized a post about President Obama's Nowruz message by an Iranian-American, who referred to him in the post as Haji Firooz. On March 4, 2019, I repeated my plea to fellow-Iranians to abandon the racist tradition of Haji Firooz. On March 24, 2021, I posted a short essay entitled "Haji Firooz rears his ugly head again," in which I characterized the Haji Firooz tradition as racist and dismissed the various long-winded explanations that have been offered about why it is not racist.
Please bear in mind that for an act or statement to be deemed offensive, it's not necessary for the perpetrator to intend to offend someone. It is sufficient for the target or an observer to take offense. So, blackface is deemed offensive in America, regardless of whether the wearer of the face meant to ridicule/offend someone. Similarly, we teach men that an act they commit in good humor against a woman is deemed offensive if the woman takes it as a sexual transgression, whether or not it was meant as such. This is why I strongly recommend the removal or modification of the Haji Firooz tradition, to eliminate all of its offensive elements.
Last night, I became aware of academic research on the roots of the Haji Firooz tradition. Research has found no trace of the tradition in classical sources. Claims by defenders of the tradition, who go to great lengths to justify it in one form or another, usually have no valid reference citations. Complicating the issue is the fact that Iran's Islamic regime is against Haji Firooz and all other joyful traditions rooted in Iran's pre-Islamic history. This makes opposition groups more adamant in defending such traditions.
Afsarzadeh briefly reviewed the history of slavery in Iran, which included not just colored people from Africa but also white women from Armenia, Georgia, and elsewhere who were used as sexual slaves in harems of the rich and powerful. In 1929, slavery was officially banned in Iran by an act of parliament, a ban that was later enshrined in the Constitution. This would have been unnecessary were slavery not practiced in the country.
Afsarzadeh drew parallels between Haji Firooz and the American Jim Crow Laws (named after a black minstrel show routine), which were meant to marginalize African-Americans the same way the Black Codes did.
Rather than outline the rest of Afsarzadeh's presentation, I post the following link to his Persian-language article "Haji Firooz and Today's World" (the first item on this search page, which also leads you to some of Afsarzadeh's other works).
Among sources cited by Afsarzadeh are Behnaz A. Mirzai's 2017 U. Texas Press book A History or Slavery and Emancipation in Iran, 1800-1929 and Beeta Baghoolizadeh's upcoming 2024 Duke U. Press book The Color Black: Enslavement and Erasure in Iran.
2024/03/14 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Throwback Thursday: Tehran, Hafez Ave., ca. 1960. [Center] Happy pi day! March 14 is known as pi day, because 3/14 matches the first three of the infinite sequence of digits in pi = 3.141 592 653 589 793 ... [Right] Last night's Socrates Think Tank Talk (see the last item below).
(2) Software engineering basics ignored: US Education Department officials have blamed various elements for the FAFSA (federal financial aid system) problems that delayed the college admission process and caused enormous anxiety for the applicants. They blame an attempt to implement many changes in the face of insufficient funding from Congress.
Yet, anyone with minimal expertise in software engineering knows not to introduce too many changes all at once, regardless of the available budget. In a production system with many thousands of users, changed components must be provided with back-ups in the event of unexpected problems. Did they actually perform substantial testing on the new system or were they spewing code up to the last minute?
In my graduate course on dependable computing, I present a long list of software project failures when one or more tenets of software engineering were ignored. Examples include an operating system that was to be built of all-new components and an airline ticketing system that incorporated hotel & rental-car reservations.
(3) Programming distributed systems: This was the title of an ACM webinar, which I watched as I walked to my 10:00 AM class yesterday. The talk by Mae Milano (Princeton University) and Ethan Cecchetti (University of Wisconsin) contained several interesting and useful ideas on efficiency, reliability, and consistency of distributed systems. Here is a 60-minute recording of the talk.
(4) Last night's Socrates Think Tank Talk: Dr. Mohsen Attaran (Cal State U. Bakersfield) spoke under the title "Cold War 2.0: The Microchip War with China." There were ~125 attendees.
The speaker's thesis was that Cold War 2.0 is unfolding between the US and China; Russia is no longer a major player on the world stage, as its GDP continues to decline and its major assets (oil & gas) are increasingly overshadowed by new technology. For example, Russia is forced to buy its microchips from China, settling for inferior quality.
Taiwan's prominent position in the microchips industry creates multiple problems. First, its position makes it a valuable target for China, who would acquire much of the technology if it were to occupy Taiwan. Second, the fall of Taiwan would disrupt US's access to microchips, an eventuality that may have motivated the US CHIPS Act, which allocated significant funds to rebuild the microchips manufacturing capability on US soil.
Besides microchips and electronics, Taiwan enjoys a strategic position on the Far-East shipping lanes, a fact that China dislikes. Another major player in the area is Vietnam, which is enjoying close ties with the US and other developed countries and stands to benefit significantly if tensions between the US and China escalate.
Generally, talks entailing political analyses do not produce answers on which everyone agrees. This is one reason I tend to skip political talks. I made an exception tonight, because the microchips and electronics industries are dear to my heart. Furthermore, I have both professional colleagues and former students who work in Taiwan, which makes me curious about the tiny island nation's future.
2024/03/13 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] The eve of the last Wednesday of the Persian calendar year (last night) is known as Chaharshanbeh Suri, with traditions of jumping over bonfires, a spread of fruits and nuts, and ghaashogh-zani (similar to trick-or-treating). [Top center] Randall Munroe's What If? (see the last item below). [Top right] Total solar eclipse of Monday, April 8, 2024, in the US: It appears that in Southern California, we will see a partial eclipse of around 40%. In Santa Barbara, the partial eclipse will begin at 10:06 AM, peaks at 11:11 AM, and ends at 12:19 PM. [Bottom left] Math puzzle: Compute the length x. [Bottom center] Math puzzle: Given that the three areas in the circle are equal, find the angle alpha. [Bottom right] In this diagram with two circles and six semicirlces, what is the ratio of the areas of the two circles?
(2) Tributes are pouring in for our departed colleage, Nobel Laureate in Physics Herb Kroemer: "In India, there is the concept of a guru, someone who is a teacher in the broadest sense, someone who teaches not only curriculum, facts, skills, and information, but creativity, morals, ethics, leadership, discipline, graciousness, and generosity. We have been fortunate to share time with Herb Kroemer, who embodies the broad ethos of the guru. He taught physics, materials science and electrical engineering at the highest level, but also behavior and life." ~ UCSB Dean of Engineering Umesh Mishra
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Mixed-political-party marriages are much rarer today than mixed-race marriages. [PBS report]
- Persian food: Sepand's ghormeh-sabzi stew, with my rice and potatoes tah-dig. [Photos]
- Biography of the guy behind Veritasium, the source of many enlightening science videos.
- Science videos are effective only if they address misconceptions head-on. [8-minute video]
(4) Book review: Munroe, Randall, What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions, unabridged 7-hour audiobook, read by Wil Wheaton, Blackstone Audio, 2014.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Randall Patrick Munroe is an American cartoonist, engineer, and author, best known as the creator of the webcomic xkcd. In this book, which consists of 57 short chapters, and its 2022 sequel, What If? 2, Munroe answers hypothetical science questions he receives from readers of his webcomic xkcd. The answers are scientifically rigorous, but also contain a good dose of humor.
Here is an example of such questions that appear absurd at first, but not absurd enough not to merit a genuine science-based answer. If you started rising steadily at 1 ft/s, how exactly will you die? Will you freeze or suffocate, or something else?
Here is another example question. Is launching the entire human race into space possible? Do we have enough energy on Earth to do it? This latter question piqued my interest. We need about 4 gigajoules (roughly a megawatt-hour) per person to escape Earth's gravity. The total energy needed is about 5% of global consumption per year; a large amount, but not impossible. However we need energy to carry the energy we need after leaving Earth. When all is added up, the required energy becomes impractical, though still not quite impossible.
2024/03/12 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Math puzzle: What is the difference between the green and yellow areas? [Top center] Two math challenges: Extract the given root without using a calculator and find the area of the middle square in terms of the areas a and b of the other two squares. [Top right] Stephanie Land's Class (see the last item below). [Bottom row] The mathematical symmetry of architectural tiles and carpet designs.
(2) Book review: Land, Stephanie, Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education, unabridged 9-hour audiobook, read by the author, Simon & Schuster Audio, 2023.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This is the story of a single mother, going to school and cleaning houses, offices, and gyms for income, struggling to raise her daughter in the face of high child-care costs, while dealing with an unreliable and emotionally-abusive ex, who shuns his responsibilities, often sneaking off with very short notice.
This is the second memoir by Land, whose first one, Maid, told the story of a single mother who tried to stay away from an abusive boyfriend and out of homeless shelters by cleaning houses in the Pacific Northwest, while harboring the dream of one day returning to college to become a writer.
The main theme of Class is the difficulty of getting educated in America, while living below the poverty line. Here, we see the 35-year-old single mother moving with her daughter to Missoula, Montana, where she returns to college but still struggles to survive, despite getting tuition, childcare, food-bank, and other assistance. Her long-divorced parents provide no emotional or financial support.
Everything in her life is unstable and unreliable (her car, her house-cleaning gigs, childcare, her ex, housemates, friends, and lovers), giving her a sense of isolation and loneliness. She has amassed tens of thousands of dollars in student debt, which, realistically, she may never be able to repay. The day-to-day struggles to survive leaves no time or energy for long-term financial planning.
The book leaves Stephanie's status unresolved, ending with her returning home from the hospital with a newborn second daughter, perhaps as an opening for a third memoir, but we know from events outside the book that she became a celebrity writer, as she had dreamed, seeing her first memoir turn into a highly-successful Netflix series.
The fact that Stephanie dug herself out of poverty has no doubt something to do with her hard work, determination, and "resilience" (a term she resents), but given how many other hard-working and talented single mothers do not make it tells us that some level of luck was also involved.
If only the pandemic-era child tax-credit were extended to become a permanent benefit for struggling parents! As I write this review, the US Congress is considering a temporary extension, but the level and duration of the extension are unknown. Nevertheless, just discussing the need for child tax-credit is a good start and raises some hope for children's-rights activists and struggling parents, single moms in particular.
2024/03/11 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Dr. Herbert (Herb) Kroemer (1928-2024), my ECE UCSB colleague, passes away at 95: He joined UCSB in 1976 and held the Donald W. Whittier Chair in Electrical Engineering. He was honored with the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics. [Top center] Math puzzle: In this diagram with two circles, find the length AB. [Top right] Believe it or not: Eighty-percent of the continental US population lives in the east half of the country. Of the remaining 20%, a tad more than half (11%) lives fairly close to the Pacific coast. [Bottom left] The US economy is in a much better shape than those of other advanced countries (New York Times chart). [Bottom center] Math puzzle: I usually supply the puzzle statement and ask you to come up with a solution. In this case, you need to supply both the statement and the solution! [Bottom right] Trump's gift to his voters: Cumulative COVID death rates in US counties according to the level of support for Trump in 2020.
(2) UCLA Bilingual Lecture Series: In yesterday's event, held over Zoom, four panelists reflected on "Various Aspects and Impacts of #WomanLifeFreedom Movement in Iran and Internationally." Dr. Nayereh Tohidi (sociologist; Cal State U. Northridge Emerita) introduced the panelists and moderated the discussion.
- Farzaneh Bazrpour (journalist) spoke on "Iranian Newspapers' Diversion from the Official State Cliches Because of Mahsa's Movement." Both the state-controlled media and the country's officials are devising new propaganda and oppression strategies in response to people's legitimate demands.
- Dr. Azadeh Momeni (political scientist; U. Toronto) spoke on "Intersection of Arts and Politics: From the American Women's Suffrage Movement to Arab Spring to Iranian #WomanLifeFreedom Movement."
- Dr. Homa Hoodfar (sociocultural anthropologist; Concordia U. Emerita) spoke on "#WomanLifeFreedom: A Political Watershed in the Iranian Protest Culture." She stressed the role of men's support, or lack thereof, in the success or failure of women's protest movements in Iran.
- Dr. Saeed Paivandi (sociologist; U. Lorraine, Nancy) presented "A Critical Analysis of the #WomanLifeFreedom Movement." This latest protest movement, which led to strong push-backs from security forces and government officials, also brought about political, personal/identity, and social changes.
(3) RIP, astrology: Most people already know that astrology is a scam. Nevertheless, a team led by MIT's Jackson Lu decided to bury this scam. They took a massive sample of 173,709 people and correlated their zodiac signs with their scores on the Big Five personality traits. There was zero correspondence.
(4) Major loss for India: Of the 1.5 million Indian students studying abroad, most will use their foreign degrees as stepping stones to lucrative careers outside India. [AP report]
(5) A final thought: Everyone laughed when a naked man appeared on the Oscars stage last night, pretending to be a streaker who changed his mind. Is it just me or are we treating male and female nudity differently?
2024/03/10 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Iranians of my generation have fond memories of this resilient French car wasn't much to look at, but it got the work done reliably and efficiently. [Top center] Cartoon based on the content of first-grade textbooks in Iran: Dad supplied bread. Mom supplied water. ???? supplied poison (referring to the poisoning of school girls in Iran). [Top right] Meme of the day: We need to save the Earth! [Bottom left] Voices of Women for Change honors four remarkable Iranian women (see the last item below). [Bottom center] A common kerosene-burning cooking implement at Iranian homes before gas and electric ranges arrived on the scene. [Bottom right] New Yorker cartoon of the day: "In my dream I'm in a large auditorium surrounded by people. They're all looking at me—and that's when I realize I'm completely naked."
(2) The Oscars: The movie "Oppenheimer" ended up winning 7 Academy Awards, including both male-actor honors, best original score, best director, and best motion picture. [List of nominees & winners]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Republicans' goals for the US? Kicking and punching an effigy of Joe Biden. Classy! [Tweet, with video]
- Goleta, over the next 10 days: Springlike weather in the lead-up to Nowruz.
[Tweet, with image]
- Meme of the day: Ban liars & crooks, not history & books. [Tweet, with photo]
- Facebook memory from Mar. 10, 2018: Tehran University's graduation awards ceremony, 1968.
(4) "Girls on the Brink: Helping Our Daughters Thrive in an Era of Increased Anxiety, Depression, and Social Media": This was the title of Tuesday's Semel Institute book talk by Donna Jackson Nakazawa, who maintains that "our daughters, students, and the girl next door are more anxious and more prone to depression and self-harming than ever before." In 2019, 1 in 3 girls reported symptoms of major depression, vs. 1 in 10 boys. A typical young girl feels that her life is one endless performance, during which she is examined and judged. In her book, Nakazawa offers 15 simple strategies for raising emotionally healthy girls, based on cutting-edge science that explains the modern pressures that make it so difficult for adolescent girls to thrive.
(5) Voices of Women for Change belatedly celebrated International Women's Day on Saturday morning by featuring and honoring four remarkable Iranian women:
- Azar Fakhr (Actress): Champion of women's theater
- Dr. Nayereh Tohidi (Professor Emerita, Cal Statue U. Northridge): Champion of women's rights
- Azar Nafisi (Critically-acclaimed Iranian-American writer): Champion of women's literature
- Roshi Roozbehani (London-based Iranian illustrator): Champion of women's arts
The four honorees offered remarks of varying lengths, as they accepted the Dance of Freedom Figurine bearing a plaque with the award's citation, recited by Ms. Taraneh Roosta.
2024/03/08 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Happy International Women's Day: This 113th edition of #WomensDay must be observed more vigorously than before, given forces in the East & West that are pushing to reverse much of the gains on gender equality and in view of women assuming an outsize role in social movements worldwide, particularly in Iran (#WomanLifeFreedom). [Center] IranWire cartoon of the day: International Women's Day in Iran. [Right] The greening of transportation: "We are in the early stages of a key transition: Electrification could be the first fundamental change in airplane propulsion systems since the advent of the jet engine."
(2) Power to Iranian women & girls: A group of Iran's University of Isfahan students celebrated their graduation in this way and were reprimanded for it.
(3) Days after Iran's election period during which hijab enforcement was put on the back burner to encourage participation, new punishments for hijablessness, including direct withdrawal of the fine from a woman's bank account, are unveiled. [Video, narrated in Persian]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Get ready for self-security-screening at US airports: TSA is giving the system a try at Las Vegas airport.
- America's aging grid infrastructure is ill-equipped to deal with the rising demand in electricity.
- UCSB's Multicultural Center suspended for allowing anti-Semitic posts and signage on its premises.
- A refreshing explanation of the speed of light and why it is finite.
- Am I a robot? I hope not, but I do fail many "I am not a robot" tests!
- "Eggplane": A most-efficient flying machine with a 5000-mile range. [5-minute video]
- Buddha: "Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, and faithfulness the best relationship."
(5) Viewing statistics as second-class math is misguided: An influential committee of the University of California Academic Senate has ruled that, starting in the fall of 2025, "high school students taking an introductory data science course or AP Statistics cannot substitute it for Algebra II for admission to the University of California and California State University." Data science advocates are worried that the recommendation "may disqualify data science and possibly statistics under the category of math courses meeting the criteria for admissions." Dozens of high school math teachers and administrators have signed a letter that reiterates support for data science and statistics courses.
(6) Several Islamist sympathizers have been elected in the UK: One winner, Scotsman George Galloway, who doesn't mind wearing designer clothes while leading his followers like an Islamic cleric, roared "From the river to the sea." Labour's candidate, Azhar Ali, told a party meeting that Israel had allowed the October 7 Hamas massacre to take place to give it the green light to invade Gaza.
2024/03/07 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Herb-rice and fish is a staple of Norooz family gatherings among Iranians, at home and in diaspora. [Top center & right] Dinner, a few nights ago: I did the easy part (rice with tah-dig); My younger son was in charge of the hard part (Persian zucchini stew). [Bottom left] While Iranian mullahs spend billions on their terrorist stooges abroad, the plight of flooded communities in the country's southeastern region goes unanswered. [Bottom center] Facebook memory from Mar. 7, 2017: Women who changed the world. [Bottom right] Eternal Melodies: Arash Fouladvand and his magnificent Bahar Choir celebrate 8 centuries of Mowlavi/Rumi in a highly-anticipated musical production: Paris, June 7; London, June 16, 2024.
(2) Shukoufan, an NGO for educating children in Iran, operates two schools in the poorest neighborhoods of South Tehran. Its volunteers provide nutrition to students and train local teachers for an enriched curriculum.
(3) Censoring the word "rape": Book-banning makes it harder to discuss sexual violence and nullifies some of the progress brought about by the #MeToo movement. [Book covers]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Food warning: Six ground-cinnamon brands found to contain unacceptable amounts of lead.
- Mitch McConnell endorses Donald Trump, citing voter support: What happened to principles and convictions?
- Praying was Mike Pence's strategy for controlling the COVID-19 pandemic.
[Tweet, with photo]
- Buying the horseshoe before the horse: Google launches $5M prize to find real apps for quantum computing.
- A hair-raising escape from a life-threatening flood.
- Facebook memory from Mar. 7, 2011: My essay, on the eve of International Women's Day.
(5) War injuries lead to violence: Scientists found profound damage, of the kind suffered by veterans due to blast exposure, in the brain of the man who killed 18 people in Lewiston, Maine, in October.
(6) On the perils of digital-only publication scheme: I have voiced concern in the past over the fate of digital publications, particularly those appearing in open-access journals. Maintaining reliable, readily-accessible archives is expensive and open-access publishers, who have already collected their fees up-front, have little incentive for preserving the papers in perpetuity. A new study has found that more than a quarter of all publications with active DOIs cannot be found in reliable archives on the Internet.
(7) National Air & Space Museum's lectures on samples-return space missions: Wednesday's first talk in the series was entitled "To the Moon and Back", by Dr. Barbara Cohen (NASA Goddard). The lunar rocks brought home by Apollo astronauts reshaped our understanding of our Moon, the Earth, and the entire solar system. Gathering more of them is one of the most-important reasons to go back to the Moon. The Artemis program is enabling lunar sample return both by humans and robots. Dr. Cohen discussed key science derived from lunar samples and how we are planning for more.
2024/03/05 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] A new book about Elon Musk by Santa-Barbara-based journalist Zoe Schiffer: Extremely Hardcore: Inside Elon Musk's Twitter. [Top center] The Roman Amphitheater of Catania in Sicily, 2nd century CE. [Top right] Jonathan Toplin's The End of Reality (see the last item below). [Bottom left] Satellite images show the devastation of Texas wildfires. [Bottom center & right] Nature photography along my 5 km Sunday walking path in Goleta.
(2) US Supreme Court rules that states cannot remove candidates from the ballot based on the 14th Amendment: As much as I want Trump barred from the 2024 election, I think the SCOTUS decision was the right one. Given the closeness of US presidential elections, I don't want the possibility of a handful of states banding together to exclude a candidate from their ballots, effectively ensuring his/her defeat.
(3) If you aren't self-employed, don't earn over $200,000, and don't itemize deductions, you may be able to use IRS's free tax-filing program for the 2023 tax year.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Fascinating physics: The turntable paradox.
- France amends its constitution to include abortion as a fundamental right.
- Credit card late fees to be capped in the US: Banks are expected to fight the initiative.
- Tumbleweeds invade Utah, covering neighborhoods and blocking houses, much like a heavy snowfall.
(5) Toplin, Jonathan, The End of Reality: How Four Billionaires Are Selling Out Our Future, unabridged 11-hour audiobook, read by Jason Culp, PublicAffairs, 2023. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
American writer, film producer and scholar Jonathan Trumbull Taplin [1947-] graduated from Princeton University in 1969 and is the Director Emeritus of the Annenberg Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. His previous books include Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy (2017) and The Magic Years: Scenes from a Rock-and-Roll Life (2021). The End of Reality is a sequel to the former book.
In 1909, Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti published "Manifesto del Futurismo" ("The Manifesto of Futurism"), in which he expressed an artistic philosophy entailing a rejection of the past and a celebration of speed, machinery, violence, youth, and industry. The manifesto predates many 20th-century events commonly suggested as its potential meaning, but the political movements that led to Fascism were already in place in the early 1900s. These movements motivated the manifesto, which in turn influenced Mussolini and his ilk. Taplin likens the agendas of US tech titans to Marinetti's.
Taplin accuses Marc Andreesen, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Mark Zuckerberg of exploiting the low quality of life among the poor in America by selling them fantasies. The promises of a more-fulfilling life in the metaverse and access to a more equitable economy based on cryptocurrency are indeed appealing. According to Taplin, crypto and social-media only preserve the status quo, that is, the free-market liberalism under which the rich have gotten much richer and the tech giants' wealth & power have grown. Dominance of the rich technocrats is further entrenched by the rampant distrust and political polarization amplified through the social-media they control.
I believe everyone should read Taplin's The End of Reality and take its warnings to heart.
2024/03/04 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] The day Moon pretended to be Saturn (Francisco Sojuel). [Top center] Role reversals: Usually, in photographs, we see a large Earth and a much smaller Moon. China's Chang spacecraft shot this photo from the the Moon's far side. [Top right] Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot (see the last item below). [Bottom left & center] Pea soup by my younger son and tacos by yours truly. [Bottom right] In AARP magazine's cover feature (Feb./Mar. 2024), Robert De Niro talks about life, fatherhood, family, and the secrets to his legendary career.
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Why is it that we can see some parts of the universe that are moving away faster than the speed of light?
- Cool engineering: The workings of a household fan. [6-minute video]
- Carl Sagan demonstrates cosmic distances in our universe.
- Facebook memory from Mar. 4, 2015: "We rarely hear the inward music, but we're all dancing to it." ~ Rumi
(3) Book review: Sagan, Carl, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, Random House, 1994.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This sequel to astronomer Carl Sagan's highly successful Cosmos was inspired by the famous "Pale Blue Dot" photograph (video link), which shows our Earth on February 14, 1990, as a tiny dot from a distance of 6 billion kilometers, where Voyager 1 was exploring the furthest parts of our Solar System. Sagan uses a description of the photograph as a springboard to discuss our state of knowledge about the Solar System, the place of our species in the universe, and a human vision for the future in a mesmerizing and philosophical narrative.
Sagan begins with an account of how we were led astray for millennia by claims of our species being unique and the pride that produced the Earth-centered world view. Lack of knowledge and tools to falsify the geocentric model, along with significant threats to deniers of geocentricity during the Roman inquisition, delayed our realization that we aren't at the center of the universe.
Sagan then provides a review of the Solar System, beginning with the aims and findings of NASA's Voyager Program. As a participating scientist in the Program, he paints a detailed picture of the difficulties in exploring low-light distant planets, particularly when we consider mechanical and electronic malfunctions in deep space.
Sagan emphasizes the importance of studying other planets and our own Moon in order to gain the requisite knowledge to protect Earth, characterizing NASA's abandonment of its Moon missions as shortsighted. We risk major, and possibly total, loss if we don't track large extraterrestrial objects doggedly and with great precision.
It's exciting to realize that our generation finally realized the dream of breaking into space, probing the far reaches of our Solar System and learning much about the cosmos. Such discoveries led to additional humility and realization of our insignificant place in the universe. Our future as a species may well depend on our ability to colonize other planets and to learn even more about the history and current state of the universe.
According to Wikipedia, "In 2023, the audiobook of Pale Blue Dot, read by Sagan, was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Recording Registry as being 'culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant'."
2024/03/02 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] When there is a will, there is a way: Nature always finds a way around adversity. [Top center] Math oddity: The best-known packing of 11 unit-squares into the smallest possible square area. The packing is due to mathematician Walter Trump. [Top right] Yet another example of nature finding a way around adversity. [Bottom left & center] A few nerdy T-shirt messages: The first message refers to the upcoming total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024. I traveled to Oregon to see the one in 2017. [Bottom right] Michio Kaku's The God Equation (see the last item below).
(2) Forces at work to turn the Taliban's Afghanistan into a global Caliphate under strict sharia law: Chicago-based charity Islamic Oasis is working with a German-British organization named the Qamar Charity Foundation to build both the ideological and welfare infrastructure for the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
(3) Abusive behavior on Facebook: The following is a Messenger exchange I had over the past two days with a Facebook "friend" I don't know personally. [Image]
(4) Book review: Kaku, Michio, The God Equation: The Quest for a Theory of Everything, unabridged 6-hour audiobook, read by Feodor Chin, Random House Audio, 2021.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Much unification has taken place in the domain of natural laws (physics). When Newton formulated the laws of gravity, he unified all the celestial and earthly laws of motion before him. But physicists have a habit of not leaving well enough alone, and they keep on discovering new theories! The ultimate challenge now facing physicists is to unify relativity and quantum theory with previous results, in order to create a grand theory or a unifying equation that could unlock the remaining mysteries of nature, from what happened before the Big Bang to the possibility of time travel; what Kaku calls "The God Equation."
After a chapter entitled "Introduction to the Final Theory," Kaku structures his presentation in 7 chapters:
- Unification—The Ancient Dream
- Einstein's Quest for Unification
- Rise of the Quantum
- Theory of Almost Everything
- The Dark Universe
- Rise of String Theory: Promise and Problems
- Finding Meaning in the Universe
Kaku's own research field, that is, string theory, offers one of the possibilities for such a unified theory, but there are still wrinkles to be ironed out. Kaku offers the analogy of 2D beings having assembled two huge sections of the jigsaw puzzle representing a unified theory, but being unable to fit the two sections together, no matter how hard they try. Kaku suggests that the two assembled sections might fit together along a third dimension, which is invisible/incomprehensible to the 2D beings. Despite his expertise being in string theory, Kaku is open to criticisms of string theory and discusses them alongside the strengths.
It is fair to say that, when a unified theory does emerge in future, it will catch everyone by surprise, just as all previous major breakthroughs in physics came as surprises to experts and non-experts alike.
2024/03/01 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] A salute to women at the beginning of Women's History Month: Next Friday (March 8, 2024), we will celebrate International Women's Day. [Top center] Iran's top female runner and Asian-record holder was not allowed to participate in world championships. [Top right] So far, I have read 20 books in 2024, which puts me four books ahead of the pace for my 100-books target. [Bottom left] Don't complain about the multi-year drought in your area: Antarctica's Dry Valley has not seen rain for about 2 million years! [Bottom center] Pre-paid meals at a restaurant allow cashless hungry people to choose a meal to eat: Splendid idea! [Bottom right] Tim Schwab's The Bill Gates Problem (see the last item below).
(2) US Department of Justice gets its first AI officer & sci/tech adviser: Princeton U. CS professor Jonathan Mayer (CS PhD & law doctor) will serve in the position.
(3) Book review: Schwab, Tim, The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire, Penguin Business, 2023. [My 3-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This is the first book by Tim Schwab, an investigative journalist based in Washington, DC. Schwab tells us that Bill Gates runs his foundation, as he did Microsoft, with an iron fist, bestowing all the power, and shining the spotlight, on himself.
We read in the book's introduction that Gates bullied and mistreated Paul Allen, Microsoft's co-founder, giving him a much smaller share and eventually forcing him out in the mid-1980s. Allen later became a multi-billionaire, because he resisted the pressure to sell his Microsoft shares upon departure. Gates himself was driven out after the government's 1990s anti-trust case against Microsoft, during which he provided a disastrous defense that painted the company as an evil force.
Schwab has done a significant amount of research on Bill Gates and his foundation. Sandwiched between introductory and concluding chapters, are 15 numbered chapters with brief titles, dealing with various aspects of Gates' life and activities: Lives saved; Women; Taxes; Fail fast; Transparency; Lobbying; Family planning; Journalism; Education; White man's burden; Bloat; Science; Agriculture; India; Covid-19.
While Schwab makes a good case about Gates' personal flaws and bullying personality, I believe that people doing charitable work must be cut some slack. Gates has certainly followed in the footsteps of earlier billionaires, who amassed their fortunes through exploitation and then tried to cover their misdeeds by turning to charity. Gates' focus on leveraging technology to reduce suffering worldwide is commendable. Second-guessing a philanthropist on alternate priorities that could have produced better results is counter-productive, in my view.
Schwab maintains that the Gates Foundation is more a tool for exerting power and buying influence than a genuine charitable organization. It helped transform Gates overnight from a greedy billionaire to a world-saving philanthropist. Yet, I would argue that having a well-endowed charity that spends money on causes I don't personally endorse is better than having no charity at all. I'm sure that if someone scrutinized my own meager charitable contributions, a great deal of problems and inefficiencies would be discovered. Choice of where to give is highly personal, whether you donate $100 or $100 million.
Schwab admits that the world does need Bill Gates' money, but he isn't convinced that the world needs Bill Gates. In the end, Schwab proposes a reappraisal of philanthropy along the lines of what was done in the 1960s. The resulting regulations, now 50+ years old, are overdue for reassessment.
2024/02/29 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Happy Leap Day! Enjoy this extra day in February, as we end the celebration of Black History Month and look forward to observing Women's History Month. [Top center & right] Fragrance and beauty of different kinds. [Bottom left] Math puzzle: in this diagram with one rectangle and four circles, prove that R = 3r. [Bottom center] Math puzzle: Find the radius R of the circle. [Bottom right] The US energy boom: Major energy sources (oil, natural gas, renewables) have doubled in the 24 years since January 2000.
(2) In an insightful CACM column, Moshe Vardi writes about how computing and economics influence each other. Productivity growth from computing and communications is a prime example of common interests.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The Hindenburg and other giant airships that went extinct with the advent of modern aviation.
- Girls on the Brink: UCLA Semel Institute webinar, March 5, 2024, 5:00 PM PT. [Info]
- A tribute to Iran, the beautiful. [Instagram post, with music video]
- My attempt at making artsy tah-dig, which we had with store-bought gheimeh-bademjan Persian stew.
(4) For 18 years, the UCSB Reads Program has brought Santa Barbara communities together to read a common book that explores compelling interdisciplinary issues of our time. Gene Lucas, whose 36-year career at UCSB spanned various roles, most notably as Executive Vice Chancellor and Acting University Librarian, is credited with starting this program, whose latest selection is Your Brain on Art. [Image]
(5) Tonight's Talangor Group meeting: Dr. Arash Taqavi spoke under the title "The Empty-Nest Syndrome." Before the main talk, Mitra Zaimi screened a video in remembrance of prolific Iranian poet/author Hamid Mosadegh [1940-1998], who was a lawyer by training. There were ~95 attendees. [Event flyer]
According to Wikipedia, "Empty-nest syndrome is a feeling of grief and loneliness parents may feel when their children move out of the family home, such as to live on their own or to have a higher education." While not a clinical condition, empty-nest syndrome can lead to depression and a loss of purpose, especially for stay-at-home or full-time parents or those who are also dealing with other stressful life events. Keeping in contact with the children who have moved out is one of the most-effective coping mechanisms.
In the US, some parents are dealing with the opposite phenomenon (let's call it "the full-nest syndrome"), because adult members of the "Boomerang Generation" return to live with their parents, primarily due to joblessness or other economic hardships. About one-third of 18-34-year-olds live at home with their parents.
2024/02/28 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Math puzzle: Given the areas of three trignales, find the area of the pink one. [Top center] Tah-dig art: The bottom-of-the-pot crispy rice, sometimes with potato or bread slices added, is a staple of Iranian cusine. This version uses parsley to create an artsy tah-dig. Please note that this isn't my creation. [Top right] Math puzzle: What fraction of the rectangle's area is shaded?
(2) The Odysseus lunar lander is on its side & will likely run out of energy soon: Possibly tangled up while landing, it is still sending images & data to Earth.
(3) Iranian economist Dr. Masoud Nili: Iran is dying. Mismanagement has turned our country, which is rich in natural and human resources, into a land of poverty and misfortune. [Tweet, with video]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Market valuation of Intel vs. NVIDIA over time. [Video]
- Journalist/activist Masih Alinejad's interview with DW Persian.
- For she has sinned: A young woman's father & brothers kick her and beat her, as she screams in pain.
- Pooran's cover of the jazzy Persian song "Shab Bood." [3-minute video]
- Pallette, a unique Iranian band, in concert in Los Angeles, Sat. April 27, 2024. [Flyer]
- UCSB Chancellor's message to the campus community regarding recent anti-Semitism incidents.
(5) Words vs. stones: According to Freud, civilization began when humans started hurling words at each other instead of stones. There is more variety in words than there is in stones. You can pick a word that inflicts just the right amount of pain. One can evade stones or deflect them with a shield, but not so for words.
(6) This is how foreign-language films are dubbed into Persian: This old example happens to involve only male voices, but women have been at the forefront of the dubbing industry in Iran.
(7) Caltech's Watson Lecture Series: "Einstein's General Relativity, From 1905 to 2005," by Kip Thorne (Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics). [74-minute video]
(8) Final thought for the day: Why is former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad allowed to run his mouth, while many other high-ranking officials have been silenced? I believe that he may not have been bluffing when he claimed that he has documents showing corruption at the top of Iran's religious and political hierarchy. The documents are supposedly kept in a safe place and will be released if something happens to Ahmadinejad.
2024/02/26 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Talk on Reza Shah in exile (see the next item below). [Center] The rise of US dollar and dollar coin against Iranian toman: The nearly straight-line rise indicates exponential growth of dollar's value and exponential decline of Iran's currency, given that the vertical axis is scaled logarithmically. [Right] Talk on Nezami's Khosrow and Shirin (see the last item below).
(2) Sunday's event in the UCLA Bilingual Lecture Series on Iran: "Reza Shah's Exile in Mauritius" by Houchang Chehabi (Boston University).
[Note: I was unable to attend this event, so this brief report is to inform my readers about the event, whose recording will become available through UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies.]
Upon Reza Shah's forced abdication in 1941, the British sent him to Mauritius Island, one of their colonies. Even though the authorities of the island tried to make Reza Shah feel comfortable and at home, he considered himself a prisoner and developed numerous physical and mental problems. He left the island with his wife and children after 7 months and went to South Africa, where he remained until his death in 1944. This talk reviewed the details of Reza Shah's years in exile and the interactions of his family with residents of the island.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Donation of $1 billion by a former professor to provide free tuition at a Bronx medical school.
- The wonderful world of Tesla coils, including using them to play music. [11-minute video]
- Simple blueberry-harvesting device. [Tweet, with video]
- Facebook memory from Feb. 26, 2016: Calligraphic rendering of a Persian verse by Hafez.
(4) Today's Georgetown U. event on Iran: Dick Davis (Iranologist, Poet, University Professor, and Translator) spoke under the title "Nezami's Khosrow and Shirin."
Before Romeo and Juliet, there was Khosrow and Shirin by Nezami Ganjavi. Dick Davis introduced Nezami's 12th-century masterpiece of Persian poetry and read from his new translation of the work (Mage Publishers, 2023, 520 pp.).
Khosrow and Shirin is a nuanced story. Yes, it follows the usual plots of love stories, with their twists and turns, but it also has elements you don't find in other love stories. For example, Shirin transforms Khosrow by educating him. At one point, overcome with passion, Khosrow tries to rape Shirin, but she stops him and takes the opportunity to teach him about gentlemanly behavior.
Nezami has a special place among the great Persian poets in that his interests revolved arount poetry (art, more generally) as an end in itself, which is different from Sa'adi's use of poetry to dispense advice on how to live or Hafez's goal of celebrating erotic love or mysticism.
2024/02/24 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Seasons of life: Youth, middle age, old age. [Center] Math puzzle: Fill in the missing digits in this multiplication. [Right] Talk on publishing and the state in Iran (see the last item below).
(2) IEEE Central Coast Section tech talk of Wed. 2024/02/21: Dr. Rich Wolski (UCSB, CS) spoke on "Building the Computational Infrastructure of Reality: Experiences with the Internet of Things." [Read more]
(3) From PBS News Hour: Teenage girl "influencers" post innocent photos of themselves on accounts managed by mom or dad. Followers are predominantly weird men who make inappropriate or explicit comments.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The majestic Sydney Opera House: History and design details, including a 3D virtual tour.
- A typical day in the life of Miami, Florida, featuring heavy cruise-ship traffic. [Time-lapse video]
- Visual comparison of tiger populations in different countries. [Animated presentation]
- According to Nobel Laureate Roger Penrose, string theory is wrong and dark matter does not exist.
(5) Today's event in the UCSB/Farhang-Foundation Lecture Series: "Publishing and the State in Iran: From the 1950s to the Present" by Dr. Laetitia Nanquette (U. New South Wales, Australia).
The medium of print is a powerful tool that has links throughout all echelons of society. Hence, the Iranian state, despite the various forms it has taken over this long period, has consistently shown a keen interest in utilizing and influencing the publishing sector. The state predominantly communicates its ideology and contributes to shaping its identity through the medium of print.
Both during the Pahlavi era and after the Islamic Revolution, government impeded the free flow of ideas in print media, but on occasion also helped by holding book exhibits, offering award programs. And subsidizing paper, which is expensive and under a government monopoly.
One of the bright spots in the Pahlavi era was the Franklin Book Program, managed by Homayoun Sanatizadeh. Franklin was a Cold War instrument to compete with communism and Soviet Union's cultural influence. It wasn't however a right-wing operation, as it was run by Iranians with center and left political leanings.
In addition to the official censorship program (that required books to obtain publication certificates before any publisher dared to touch them), various forms of self-censorship by the writer, editor, and publisher have been in place. Beginning in 1977, a law required book-sellers to keep a record of their customers.
Five categories of books have been frowned upon by the Iranian state: Communist, Christian, Foreign-language, anti-Islamic, and sexually-explicit. For a few short years after the Revolution, books were more or less free, but newspapers were tightly controlled. During 1979-1983, Enghelab Avenue was a vibrant center for book-sellers and publishers.
Article 24 of Iran's post-Revolution Constitution is explicit in banning any publication that is harmful to the principles of Islam. Just as film directors and producers have learned to convey their messages in a way that gets around the censors, so too authors and publishers strive to present ideas in a manner that does not rile the censors. Control over Web sites is less strict than print media.
This scholarly talk included many reference citations, one of which is the following: Abiz, Alireza, Censorship and Literature in Post-Revolutionary Iran: Politics and Culture Since 1979, Bloomsbury, 2020.
2024/02/22 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Throwback Thursday: Paul McCartney and his then fiancee, actress Jane Asher, visited Iran for 2 days in 1968 on their way back from India, touring historic and cultural sites such as Tehran's Shah Mosque. [Top center] New satellite-based research reveals that land along the US East Coast, from Boston to Miami, is slumping into the ocean, compounding the danger from global sea level rise (NYT). [Top right] Each dot in this image of a small portion of the universe is a galaxy and each galaxy contains about 100 billion stars, with each star having at least one planet. This is how insignificant Earth's place and humans' place are in the universe! [Bottom left] Cleaning crew finds two Q1 microcomputers, which were last used in the 1970s: Only one other Q1 is known to exist. [Bottom center] The largest tip ever (see the last item below). [Bottom right] A beautiful and surprising mathematical identity: See if you can prove it.
(2) World Music Series: A subset of UCSB Middle East Ensemble performed on campus yesterday in a free noon concert. Here are two samples (a Turkish dance and a Persian love song).
(3) Scientific fraud: Retraction notices multiply. This set includes entire issues of the journal Microprocessors and Microsystems as well as several individual articles. [Tweet, with article images]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- A black hole 17 B times larger than our Sun & eating the equivalent of one Sun every day discovered.
- Intuitive Machines touches down on Moon in nail-biting descent of its lander, a first for the US since 1972.
- Google suspends the capability of its Gemini chatbot to generate images of people.
- An interesting talk by Dr. Laetitia Nanquette on publishing and the state in Iran. [My report on Facebook]
(5) Operations of a major ransomware group disrupted: UK National Crime Agency, US FBI, Europol, and a coalition of international police agencies has taken control of an online site run by the LockBit ransomware group, whose software was the most-deployed ransomware variant across the world last year.
(6) Deans' lists, a long-time staple of American higher education, appear to be heading for extinction. Last fall, Cornell and Penn stopped releasing deans' lists in an effort to reduce students' academic stress. Meanwhile, Brown hasn't had a dean's list since it moved to its current open curriculum academic model in the late 1960s, and Harvard last published a dean's list in 2002.
(7) Final thought for the day (the largest tip ever): In 1922, when Einstein realized he didn't have cash to tip a bellboy in Japan, he wrote two notes for him, both in German.
The first note contained his theory of happiness: "A calm and modest life brings more happiness than the pursuit of success combined with constant restlessness."
On a second note, he wrote: "Where there's a will there's a way."
The first note recently sold for $1.6 million. The second note fetched $0.24 million. Total tip = $1.84 million.
2024/02/19 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Happy Presidents' Day (see the next item below). [Top center] Sepideh Rashnu, the fearless Iranian women's-rights activist, hijabless in front of Tehran's notorious Evin Prison, to which she has been summoned for serving her prison term. [Top right] The harassment and arbitrary detention of Iranian Baha'is continue: The documentary "To Light a Candle" tells part of this 21st-century horror tale. [Bottom left] Gun violence: America's parade of corpses. [Bottom center] Math puzzle: Given the areas of three of the squares, find the area of the fourth one. [Bottom right] Lady Justice trying to hang on, as governments in Iran and elsewhere are bent on blowing her away.
(2) In praise of Presidents' Day: In American history, few occasions stand as proud reminders of the nation's journey and the leaders who shaped its destiny quite like Presidents' Day. Yes, we have had terrible Commanders in Chiefs, but they have been few & far in between, and we should strive to keep it that way.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- A report from the opening of Iran Computer Museum on February 16, 2024 (video, narrated in Persian).
- Middle East Quarterly: Brief reviews of eight books about the Middle East.
- Getting to know prominent computer scientist Kurt Mehlhorn: Part of the "People of ACM" series.
- Jon Stewart ridicules Tucker Carlson for his free propaganda piece in praise of Russia.
- Space fact of the day: Human-made objects orbiting the Earth have a total weight of 25 million pounds.
(4) In the upcoming Iranian elections, Tehran residents are offered a choice between two competing slates, both approved by the regime and neither one including a woman.
(5) Near-record winds in the US northeast pushed multiple passenger planes to speeds exceeding 800 mph, a tad over the speed of sound (767 mph), but for technical reasons, they did not break the sound barrier.
2024/02/17 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Screenshot of video generated by OpenAI's Sora, an AI video generator aimed at facilitating filmmaking but which can also contribute to the proliferation of fake videos. [Center] The spiral of square roots. [Right] The unique and fantastic street lights at Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
(2) Nowruz and spring are one month away: The spring equinox (saal-tahveel) will be on Tuesday, March 19, 2024, 8:06:26 PM PT (Wednesday, March 20, 6:36:26 AM Tehran time).
(3) Succession conflicts will end Islamic Republic of Iran's claim to legitimacy: Saudi Arabia was in a similar bind, but it resolved the problem by putting MBS in charge and sidelining others with claims to the throne.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Aleksei Navalny, outspoken Putin has died in prison: He survived a nerve-agent attempt on his life in 2020.
- Be my Valentine: India's Narendra Modi loves those who sell oil to him. [Tweet, with photo]
- National unity is good, but one should not have to sacrifice one's principles to achieve it. [Tweet, with meme]
- Sharif U. Technology Association (SUTA) reunion: Aug. 30 to Sep. 1, 2024, Niagara Falls, Canada.
- China's super-advanced space station, "The Heavenly Palace," is taking shape. [17-minute video]
- A brief but spectacular take on the future of the Internet: Networking pioneer Vint Cerf on PBS News Hour.
- How language shapes the way we think: 14-minute TED talk by Lera Boroditsky.
- Thirty-six Super Bowl halftime shows ranked: Looking back at some of these shows is fun.
- Facebook memory from Feb. 17, 2013: A tribute to my father (with texts in Persian and English).
(5) Houthi bypass: Goods forge an overland path to Israel via Saudi Arabia & Jordan, avoiding attacks on ships in the Red Sea. Israel-based firms run trucking routes from the ports of Dubai and Bahrain to Haifa.
(6) Leap day is coming up: Couples who dislike anniversaries have a chance to get married on Feb. 29, which will lead to anniversaries once every four years.
(7) The defenseless people of Gaza: This is an expression we hear often. But we should stop and ask, "Why are they defenseless?" They have a government with a significant stash of arms which went into hiding instead of defending its people. Hamas likely knew that it could not stand up to Israel, yet it decided to trigger a war by its barbaric acts on October 7, 2023.
2024/02/15 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Throwback Thursday: Class of 1968, Electromechanical Division, College of Engineering, University of Tehran. [Top center] Spring's in the air: Early this morning on the UCSB campus. [Top right] Persian calligraphy in fashion: Even low-brow clothing, such as T-shirts sold on Amazon, feature calligraphic art & messaging. [Bottom left] Meme of the day: Eleanor Roosevelt on liberals and liberalism. [Bottom center] Math puzzle: Find the height of the red pole. [Bottom right] Futurism and its connection to Fascism (see the last item below).
(2) Exam anxiety is a real problem for many students, so instructors should strive to reduce it by improving transparency and inclusivity in both written and oral exams.
(3) Imran Khan's election victory speech from prison in Pakistan: The AI-generated speech signals that we are entering uncharted territory in the use and abuse of AI.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Chief Middle East Advisor to Turkey's President Erdogan: "Israel must be destroyed."
- Hamas networks operate openly in Western Europe, often posing as human-rights advocates.
- College Board pays $750K to settle claims that it violated students' privacy by selling their personal data.
- Scientific integrity is going down the drain: A Columbia cancer surgeon kept publishing flawed studies.
(5) Microsoft's "AI Anthology" contains a diverse collection of essays on the future of AI, with the aim to answer two core questions:
- How might this technology and its successors contribute to human flourishing?
- How might we as society best guide the technology to achieve maximal benefits for humanity?
(6) Academics in US, UK, and Australia collaborated on drone research with Iran's Sharif University of Technology, which is under sanctions for its ties to the military.
(7) The Manifesto of Futurism: In 1909, Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti published "Manifesto del Futurismo," in which he expressed an artistic philosophy entailing a rejection of the past and a celebration of speed, machinery, violence, youth, and industry. The manifesto predates many 20th-century events commonly suggested as its potential meaning, but the political movements that led to Fascism were already in place in the early 1900s. These movements motivated the manifesto, which in turn influenced Mussolini and his ilk. In Jonathan Taplin's The End of Reality, a book which I have started reading and will review in due course, agendas of US tech titans are likened to Marinetti's.
2024/02/14 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Happy Valentine's Day! Sending you love and wishing you all the peace and joy that love can bring. [Top center] Young girls ice-skating at Ice Palace, a sports & entertainment complex just south of Vanak Sq. on Pahlavi Ave. in the pre-Revolution Iran. [Top right] Neil deGrasse Tyson's Starry Messenger (see the last item below). [Bottom left] Math puzzle: Find the measure of angle x if the blue part of the square is twice as large as the yellow part. [Bottom center & right] Opening of Iran Computer Museum: I am delighted to report that thanks to the efforts of visionary investors and a large group of young people managing & curating the collection, Iran Computer Museum will open its doors in Tehran on Fri., Feb. 16, 2024.
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- UCSB World Music Series: Irish, Scotish, & Celtic music by The Decent Folk. [Video 1] [Video 2] [Video 3]
- Only 16% of community-college students transfer and graduate with a bachelor's degree within 6 years.
- Under intense pressure, Texas A&M closes its campus in Qatar because of that country's support of Hamas.
- In Indonesia, a player was struck by lightning on the soccer field and died.
- Fashion show in Tehran, Iran, 1958. [Tweet, with video]
- A very interesting and informative discussion on neuroscientific experiments regarding free will.
(3) Book review: Tyson, Neil deGrasse, Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization, unabridged 7-hour audiobook, read by the author, Macmillan Audio, 2022.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Our perspectives on Earth and human species changed significantly once astronauts saw our bluish planet from the space, a sight that lacked any borders or human-made structures. Our "pale blue dot" planet is but a tiny part of the immense universe that contains galaxies so far away that their distance to Earth is measured in light years (one light year, the distance light travels in one year, is about six trillion, or 6*10^12, miles).
As much as we take pride in our ability to predict the course of science and technology, most transformative sci/tech ideas surprised us when they emerged. By presenting facts about our universe and its unbounded beauty, Tyson challenges prevalent assumptions about our existence and abilities. Just like our cave-dwelling ancestors of 30,000 years ago, we remain shortsighted and averse to risk: "Let's solve the problems in our cave, before venturing to areas outside the domain of our daily existence," the elders may have advised enterprising youngsters, who wanted to explore further.
We encounter the same mindset today, when certain politicians and thought leaders demand that we solve Earth's problems (or worse, America's problems) before venturing into space or gazing at distant galaxies, to which we may never travel.
Tyson also points out that we are not as different as we think we are from our political or social adversaries. Fox News is abhorred by the left for its agenda-driven news coverage, a disdain that transfers to the entire Fox network. Yet some of the most-socially-progressive programs have been shown on Fox, including a version of the science series "Cosmos," black-led programs, and the irreverent "The Simpsons" that made fun of everyone and everything. Additionally, Fox Sports is a respected player in its field. Tyson levels similar criticisms at the right for distrusting all non-Fox media.
As we grapple with political and cultural stands that are more polarized than ever, Starry Messenger provides a much-needed antidote to our intolerant and divided demeanor, while making a passionate case for a cosmic perspective and scientific rationality, the twin driving forces of enlightenment.
2024/02/12 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] February 11 is UN's International Day of Women in Science: Let's celebrate their many accomplishments, despite getting smaller research grants and less in other forms of support than their male colleagues. [Top center] The perfect symmetry & signature blue tiles of Shah Mosque, Isfahan, Iran. [Top right] Avoiding toxic positivity is important when trying to help someone in distress. [Bottom left] IEEE celebrates its 140th anniversary this year by offering the e-book Inspiring Technology: 34 Breakthroughs. [Bottom center] David Linden's The Accidental Mind (see the last item below). [Bottom right] Cat owners and their hostage partners will appreciate this cartoon!
(2) What an exciting Super Bowl! I had no favorite team going in, but by the end of the 25-22 overtime nail-biter, I was cheering for the champions, Kansas City Chiefs.
(3) Being thrown into the sea isn't just a Hamas threat against Israelis: The Greeks face a similar threat from Turkey, which has also threatened an invasion of Armenia.
(4) Book review: Linden, David J., The Accidental Mind: How Brain Evolution Has Given Us Love, Memory, Dreams, and God, Harvard, 2007.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
I read this 276-page book on the heels of listening to a comprehensive 36-lecture course, Understanding the Brain, which I have reviewed on GoodReads. Linden's book takes a higher-level view, skipping many details of our brain's architecture and subsystems in favor of historical perspectives on its evolutionary development.
The book contains the following 9 chapters, between a 4-page prologue entitled "Brain, Explained" and an 8-page epilogue, "The Middle Things." There is also a 7-page list of "Further Readings and Resources."
- The Inelegant Design of the Brain
- Building a Brain with Yesterday's Parts
- Some Assembly Required
- Sensation and Emotion
- Learning, Memory, and Human Individuality
- Love and Sex
- Sleeping and Dreaming
- The Religious Impulse
- The Unintelligent Design of the Brain
As evident from several of the chapter titles, the author doesn't consider the brain an elegantly-designed, highly-efficient organ that is perfectly suited to its functions. Weighing around 3 pounds, our brain is a patchwork of old (outdated) structures and newer growth that together use some 20% of our body's energy. Far from being a miracle of intelligent design that should be worshiped, the miracle is the fact that this amalgam of ad-hoc parts works as well as it does!
Early on, Linden highlights three guiding principles of the brain's design that show the ways in which human brain is poorly organized:
- New brain structures appear on top of ancient structures, like added ice-cream scoops to previously deposited ones. Imagine trying to build a modern car while being restricted to adding parts and systems to a 1925 Model-T Ford.
- The component parts (the cells) of the brain have engineering flaws. That the brain made of such crummy parts works at all is in part due to its massively parallel and massively redundant architecture.
- The brain's assembly process (brain development) is suboptimal. Because the brain has never been redesigned from the ground up, it is filled with multiple systems and anachronistic junk.
2024/02/10 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Happy Lunar (Chinese) New Year: May this new year of the dragon bring peace and prosperity to the world! [Top center] Cropped from original painting by architect/artist Talieh Keshavarz: "A Fine Day at Laguna," acrylic on canvas, 36 x 48. [Top right] IEEE Computer magazine's cover feature for February 2024 (see the next item below). [Bottom left] Headquarters of an on-line seller in Iran was defaced after a product was interpreted as insulting Prophet Mohammad's daughter. The message threatens that the extremists will next come for the company's employees. [Bottom center] Find the area of the smaller of the two equilateral triangles, given the areas of three other triangles. [Bottom right] This afternoon's walk alongside Devereux Slough in Goleta: One of the photos appears to be upside-down, but it isn't.
(2) Cover feature of IEEE Computer magazine: "Disruptive technologies, especially artificial intelligence, are affecting all of us. But are we using this technology in an ethical way?" The issue contains several interesting articles, including "International Federation for Information Processing Code of Ethics in Context."
(3) Prompted by a reply to my post on research fraud, I am posting about a 2020 paper of mine entitled "On Research Quality and Impact: What Five Decades in Academia Has Taught Me."
[PDF: English;
Persian]
(4) In the US, ~2 cyclists are killed and ~50 are injured in traffic accidents per day: None of these 52 daily accidents is widely reported, except possibly on local news. But a Waymo driverless car being involved in an accident in which a cyclist suffers minor scratches becomes front-page news. Why?
(5) As an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Computing, I was delighted to see the article "Toward Sustainable Computer Systems," by Lieven Eeckhout (Ghent U.), in the February 2024 issue of IEEE Computer magazine. It begins thus: "Sustainability is a pressing concern that encompasses much more than cutting carbon emissions to reach net zero. However, with the right techniques and tools, computer scientists and engineers can understand and navigate a variety of new design tradeoffs that will steer future solutions."
2024/02/08 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Stars you see at night are part of this yellow circle. [Top center] Munker optical illusion: The balls behind the horizontal lines are all the same color. [Top right] Math puzzle: Find x as a function of m and n. [Bottom left] Scientific fraud goes to the next level: We knew of the practice of offering author slots on low-quality or plagiarized research papers for a fee. Now, journal editors are being approached with offers of significant cash bribes for accepting fraudulent papers. [Bottom center] Polar bear snoozing on an iceberg: This photo, shot by amateur photographer Nima Sarikhani during an expedition in Norway, was chosen from among 50,000+ photos for the 2023 Wildlife Photographer of the Year People's Choice Award. She hopes it will inspire people to fight climate change. [Bottom right] Talk on holography (see the last item below).
(2) The science of 6 degrees of separation: Or is it 5 or 4 degrees of separation now, owing to greater connectivity through social media? [8-minute video]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Tucker Carlson provides free propaganda platform for Putin on the Ukraine war.
- Qatar eliminates Iran at the Asian Cup semifinals 3-2. [13-minute extended highlights]
- UCSB World Music Series noon concert: Tom Ball & Kenny Sultan performed yesterday. [Video 1] [Video 2]
- Humor: If you have children looking for science project topics, here's a suggestion!
(4) Sportsmanship to the extreme: Danish team captain, whose team was trailing 0-1 against Iran, intentionally missed a PK when he realized that the player who touched the ball with his hands did it because he mistook a spectator's whistle for the end-of-game whistle by the referee. [Video]
(5) Wednesday night's book talk at UCSB's Campbell Hall: What can we do to remain hopeful in a world filled with hatred and divisive stories on social media? As head of TED, Chris Anderson has had a ringside view of the world's boldest thinkers sharing their most uplifting ideas. With his new book, Infectious Generosity: The Ultimate Idea Worth Spreading, Anderson looks at one of humankind's defining but overlooked impulses—generosity—and how we can super-charge its potential to build a hopeful future.
(6) Tonight's Talangor Group talk: Dr. Mohammad Taghi Fatehi spoke under the title "Holography: What It Is and What It Is Not." Before the main talk, Dr. Payam Kiani made a brief presentation on stereo vision & 3D TV.
Holography is a technique to record and reconstruct a 3-dimensional scene on a 2D plane (i.e., a hologram) based on optical diffraction and interference. Holography was discovered in 1948 by Hungarian-born electrical engineer Denis Gabor who proposed to use this technique to improve the resolution in electron microscopy. Gabor received the Nobel Prize in Physics for this work in 1971.
This 13-minute YouTube video contains an introduction to how holograms are made.
2024/02/06 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] A design to maximally irk the MAGA crowd! [Center] A nerdy birthday gift: This paper was sent to me by IEEE Computer Society a few days ago, along with a birthday message. It refers to the "birthday paradox," the fact that you only need 23 people in a group for the probability of two or more individuals having the same birthday to exceed 50%. [Right] The great escape: A recurring dream of Iranians.
(2) Light at the end of the tunnel: Stayed home on Monday, having cancelled my UCSB class due to the possibility of life-threatening flooding in the entire SoCal region. Looking forward to Thursday and beyond.
(3) The Salton Sea: The story of the California lake that was created by an engineering mistake, brought with it prosperity and tourism, and then became a dead zone just as unexpectedly. [10-minute video]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- California storm news, including a fallen tree partially blocking Storke Road near my home.
- Wildfires in Chile kill 112, with hundreds more missing. [Photos]
- Dartmouth College reinstates standardized testing for applicants. Other elite colleges will likely follow suit.
- Moonquakes could spell trouble for future Moon missions and bases to be built there.
- The roadmap to slowing and even reversing aging according to Nobel Laureates.
- Cheesy ad for the 1961 B-movie "Why Bother to Knock" in pre-Revolution Iran.
[Tweet, with image]
(5) Like all of his predecessors, former Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is being completely sidelined: He has been disqualified from seeking election to Iran's Assembly of Experts, a post that would have allowed him to remain in the spotlight.
(6) Hypocrisy: The mullahs host an American porn star visiting Iran, because she supports Palestinians. But they have a problem with soccer star Ali Daei's daughter appearing sans hijab!
(7) When the balance of nature is disturbed: Big-headed ants, brought to Africa recently by tourism and commerce, eat the native ants, which protect the trees from elephants. Now, elephants eat more trees, leading to inadequate cover for lions hunting zebras, so the lions get less food. [NPR sory]
(8) Fraudulent bank accounts created for University of California employees: Names, SSNs, and other personal information (believed to have been collected in an old data breach) are being used to open unauthorized bank accounts at Chime, Go2Bank, and Acorns.
2024/02/04 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Mathematical art: Floor mosaic from Hisham's Palace, Jericho, 8th century CE. [Top center] Talk on the effect of learning on the brain structure (see the last item below). [Top right] Believe it or not, such corrugated brick walls use fewer bricks than a straight wall: They're known as crinkle-crankle walls, and 100 fine examples survive in Suffolk, England. The savings in the number of bricks comes from the fact that a straight wall with a single layer of bricks won't be as stable. [Bottom left] History made at the 2024 Grammy Awards: Joni Mitchell, 80, offered an emotional rendition of "Both Sides Now" at her first-ever performance on the Grammys stage. [Bottom center] Withholding help from those who need it, because a few bad apples may take advantage of our generosity, is wrong. [Bottom right] We read that movie theaters are in trouble financially. Here is a popcorn replacement suggestion to bring audiences back!
(2) Home-bound today: Coffee brewed, news shows on, as we brace for a day of rain, serious flooding, and high winds in the Santa Barbara area. [Tweet, with images of news & cooking]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The storm approaching California has intensified: Historic rainfall and flooding expected.
- Storm damage: Two condos in a Goleta housing complex got seriously damaged by a falling tree.
- Santa Barbara Airport has closed down due to flooding on the runway.
- Iran scores an impressive 2-1 victory against Japan in the Asian Cup tournament. [9-minute highlights]
(4) Cancellation of my in-person class (message to students): Due to potential flooding and the ensuing challenges, I am cancelling our discussion session and office hour on Monday 2/05 per campus safety guidelines. Please watch Lecture 6 on shared memory implementations and Lecture 7 on sorting networks before our Wednesday 2/07 class. We will discuss three lectures in the next two discussion sessions.
(5) "How Learning Changes the Brain Structure": This was the title of the first talk in this morning's Persian Zoom meeting hosted by UCLA Medical Center. Dr. Mohammad Bagheri was the speaker.
The talk's main message was that brain decline isn't inevitable as we age. Neuroplasticity, brain's ability to change its structure and wiring, remains with us until we die. The link between brain changes and learning is a 2-way street, with brain rewiring creating new knowledge and learning triggering changes in the brain. As long as we don't stop learning, our brain will continue to improve. If we don't learn new things or stop practicing existing skills, brain decline will ensue.
When we master/practice a domain/skill, three processes are triggered in the brain. The first one is synaptic strengthening, which is a short-term chemical process. The second one involves restructuring of connections, a long-term physical process that is similar to committing something to long-term memory. The third one creates regional specialization in the brain, which brings about permanent functional changes.
2024/02/03 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] "In Hot Water": This is the title of the cover feature for Science magazine, issue of February 2, 2024. The focus is on how El Nino will change in a warmer world. [Top center] What a contrast! Taylor Swift and her boyfriend, KC Chiefs tight-end Travis Kelce. [Top right] Africa's emerging ocean (see the next item below). [Bottom left] Math challenge: Compute the infinite sum on the third line, given the clue on the second line. [Bottom center] Found in Dominican Republic: Praying Mantis preserved in amber is about 30 million years old. [Bottom right] Square roots of natural numbers occurring in a 3D cubic grid.
(2) A new ocean is forming in Africa along a 35-mile crack that opened up in Ethiopia in 2005: The crack, which has been expanding ever since, is a result of three tectonic plates pulling away from each other. Africa's new ocean will take million of years to form, but the Afar region's fortuitous location at the boundaries of the Nubian, Somali, and Arabian plates makes it a unique laboratory to study elaborate tectonic processes.
(3) Extensive research fraud exposed: Cliques of mathematicians at institutions in China, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere have been artificially boosting their colleagues' citation counts by churning out low-quality papers that repeatedly reference their work.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- SoCal weather: Potentially life-threatening flooding between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, Sun.-Mon.
- Video of severe flooding in San Diego, California (late January, 2024).
- Drug overdose deaths are rising, but San Francisco's rate is more than double the US average. [NYT chart]
- Some men resent women for simply taking up space, regardless of their accomplishments & good deeds.
- A la "Peanuts" (cartoon): "It's a basic competency test. I'll hold the ball, & you come running up & kick it!"
- No amount of Islamic oppression and economic hardship can dampen the spirit of fun-loving Iranians.
(5) The Salton Sea: The story of the California lake that was created accidentally by an engineering mistake, brought with it much economic & tourist activities, and became a dead zone just as unexpectedly.
(6) NASA's Space Shuttle Endeavour installed at California Space Center in Los Angeles: What's unique about this installation is that the 122-foot-tall flier with a 78-foot wingspan has its massive external fuel tank and two solid rocket boosters attached, all displayed as if they are on the launch platform. [Tweet, with photos]
(7) Santa Barbara area rents are rising: Meanwhile, UCSB's plans to develop additional student housing have been delayed by the Munger Hall debacle, squeezing the students financially. Rents in Isla Vista & Goleta are even higher than the area averages shown. [UCSB Daily Nexus chart]
(8) A final thought: In Goleta, we have rain in the forecast for 7 of the next 10 days: The already-saturated ground may lead to life-threatening flooding and mudslides. The entire SoCal area is in the same boat.
2024/02/01 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Throwback Thursday: This photo, taken at an unspecified location some five decades ago, contains two very famous Iranian pop singers. [Top center] Celebrating my birthday with the family four years ago: You do the math! [Top right] Woodcut by Adolf Vollmy: The work was inspired by an 1833 meteor shower that was so intense (up to 100,000 meteors every hour) that many thought the end of the world had come. [Bottom left] US policy toward Iran (see the next item below). [Bottom center] A birthday present: Having completed a 3-year term as an IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Visitor/Lecturer during 2021-2023, I have just learned that I have been reappointed to the position for another 3-year term, 2024-2026. [Bottom right] Reflections at the end of another birthday (see the last item below).
(2) Biden's miscalculations about Iran: After the hard-line stance of the Trump administaration, Biden returned to Obama's appeasement policy, which has led to tensions and instability in the region. Prohibitions against supporting proxy terror groups should be included in any new deal with Iran.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Meta's Mark Zuckerberg apologizes to child abuse victims and their families at a US Senate hearing.
- Unprecedented ~60 MPH winds expected on Sunday along CA Coast, from Channel Islands to Fort Bragg.
- Why 4 of 5 sufferers from autoimmune diseases are women: The female-only Xist molecule is implicated.
- MAGA World vs. Taylor Swift: I am taking the side of the talented star against the bullies!
(4) At the end of my 77th birthday: I am thankful for all the birthday wishes from family & friends and for having been given a chance to complete another revolution around the Sun. The kids and I celebrated by having dinner at Nikka Fish Market & Grill in Goleta, where I ordered a char-broiled trout dish (my mom's favorite) and a cup of clam chowder. Your place was empty.
I will spare you my usual long essay on properties of my birthday number, 77, except to note that it's a semi-prime (7*11), the sum of the first eight prime numbers (2 + 3 + 5 + 7 + 11 + 13 + 17 + 19), and the sum of three consecutive perfect squares (4^2 + 5^2 + 6^2).
2024/01/31 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Third-to-eighth-grade math scores have recovered somewhat after the COVID years but they are still 0.4 year under the average in 2019 and earlier (NYT chart). [Center] One of Norway's 200,000+ islands. Only Sweden has more islands than Norway. [Right] Interesting article on AI fairness (see the last item below).
(2) First human receives a Neuralink brain implant: The company claims rapid recovery of the patient (whose identity is unknown) and successful detection of neuron spikes by the implant.
(3) How the Celsius temperature scale in use today came about: Anders Celsius originally had it upside-down, with 0 being at water's boiling point and 100 at its freezing point.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Atmospheric river coming to SoCal this week: Extreme rainfall & heavy snow forecast across the West.
- Gen-Z gender divide: The women are liberal, whereas men tend to support demagogues and strongmen.
- Chita Rivera, the classically-trained and Tony-winning Broadway star dancer, dead at 91.
- ABBA songs & their wonderful harmonies never get old: Covers of "Super Trooper" & "Dancing Queen."
- State Parks are among the most-valuable treasures of our Golden State, California. [FB post, with photo]
- Dundunba Drum Lab performed at UCSB’s World Music Series noon concert today.
[Video 1]
[Video 2]
(5) National Air & Space Museum's 2024 lectures on samples-return missions, on YouTube (5:00-6:00 PM PT).
March 6: "To the Moon and Back" (Dr. Barbara Cohen)
April 24: "The Stardust Discovery Mission: Bringing Comet Wild-2 Samples Home to Earth" (Dr. Scott Sandford)
May 22: "OSIRIS-Rex: Revealing Secrets from the Dawn of our Solar System" (Dr. Dante Lauretta)
June 5: "Bringing Mars Samples Back to Earth" (Meenakshi Wadhwa)
(6) Inherent limitations of AI fairness: This is the subject of the cover feature of Communications of the ACM, issue of February 2022.
The vast majority of AI literature is concerned with the easily-attainable notion of group fairness, which requires that any two protected groups should, on average, receive similar labels. Group fairness expresses the principles of individual fairness by looking at the sum of discrimination toward an entire group rather than individual contributions.
Though this increased statistical power makes group fairness more-practical to measure and satisfy, it comes with its own problems, including Simpson's Paradox, which essentially warns us that conclusions may vary depending on the granularity of groups.
2024/01/29 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Wonders of our Solar System: Clearest photo of Planet Jupiter ever taken. [Center] Year of the humanoid: Legged robots from 8 companies vie for jobs. [Right] Yaxi Highway, aka the Skyroad: China's 240-km marvel of engineering.
(2) Amazing math & engineering: This set of 242 interlocking bevel gears on the surface of a sphere is composed of 12 blue gears with 25 teeth each, 30 yellow gears with 30 teeth, 60 orange gears with 14 teeth, and 140 red gears with 12 teeth. [Tweet, with GIF image]
(3) Algorithmic video surveillance will be taken to new heights at the Paris Olympics: But unlike the Chinese who quietly accepted surveillance at the last Olympic Games, the French are vehemently protesting.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Three US soldiers killed and 34 injured in Jordan by drone strikes linked to Iran.
- Israeli investigation reveals that much of Hamas's arms used on Oct. 7 came from the Israeli military.
- The UN fires several employees after allegations that they aided Hamas in its attack of October 7.
- Artemis II will send astronauts around the Moon in world's first crewed deep-space mission in 50 years.
- Synchron is racing Neuralink to bring its brain implants, delivered via blood vessels, to market.
- An explanation of why we continue to cough after we are no longer sick.
- Modeling sports match-ups with intransitive dice games: A fun, but challenging, math exercise.
- The comic genius of Robin Williams during a British TV interview.
(5) Cox Communication's dishonest service: About a week ago, I went to Cox store in Santa Barbara to return a cable box I no longer needed. Rather than simply record the return, which would have reduced my monthly fee by a few dollars, the agent apparently signed me up for new services, which will increase my cost, all without my consent. What triggered my suspicion was the assignment of a new account number, an unnecessary action for the transaction.
[On X (Twitter), a Cox PR person responded to my criticism and recommended that I contact Cox's customer service to fix the problem.]
(6) Ex-contractor for IRS sentenced to 5 years in prison for leaking Donald Trump's tax returns: As usual, low-level criminals are pursued with vengeance, while those at the very top walk free, either because they aren't charged or else their teams of influential (and expensive) lawyers use every delay tactic in the book and negotiate favorable plea deals after everyone is worn out.
2024/01/27 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left & Center] Stearns Wharf during today's outing in Santa Barbara with my sisters on the occasion of my upcoming birthday. [Right] Homa Katouzian's Humour in Iran (see the last item below).
(2) Our bodies constitute permanent records of government policies: Americans are getting shorter (once the world's tallest, we are now hovering around 50th in the world), heavier, & less intelligent, and we die younger. In this podcast, two scientists discuss how these undesirable changes are direct consequences of government policies on healthcare, nutrition, and equity.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Taking advantage of the the Israel-Gaza conflict, Iran's Islamic regime picks up the pace of executions.
- Iran's top diplomat embarrasses the country with his English speech at the UN.
- Jewish Iranian-American astronaut Jasmine Moghbeli is a target of anti-Semitic hate speech in Iran.
- A hilarious explanation of the lyrics for the song "Waltzing Matilda." [5-minute video]
- Animal intelligence: Solving a maze by thinking outside the box. [Video]
- See if you can identify which of these ten faces were AI-generated and which ones are real (I got only 4).
(4) Attosecond physics: We can now mark time and observe physical phenomena within 10^(–18) second. This ability, which was honored with the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics, opens up new avenues for developing advanced materials with mind-boggling properties and for understanding our universe in much greater detail.
(5) Book review: Katouzian, Homa, Humour in Iran: Eleven-Hundred Years of Satire and Humour in Persian Literature, I. B. Tauris, 2024. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Combining Persian original texts with some English translations, the book, which is aimed at both scholars and ordinary readers, covers 11 centuries of satire, irony, & humor in Persian verse & prose. The Persian literary tradition includes various forms of humor, from the coarse and obscene to the subtle and refined. The sources range from Ferdowsi's epic Shahnameh, master satirists such as Obeyd Zakani, Sa'di, Rumi, Khayyam, Hafiz, Anvari, Sana'i, Khaqani, Suzani, Qa'ani, & Yaghma, ending with 20th-century literary figures such as Iraj, Dehkhoda, Bahar, Eshqi, Aref, Hedayat, Jamalzadeh, & Al-e Ahmad.
The book's 10 chapters follow a 17-page introduction, in which we read a few samples of humor and learn, among other things, about the lack of an exact Persian equivalent for the term "humor" or "humour" (none of the Persian/Arabic terms "tibat," "motayebeh," "mezah," "tamaskhor," "maskhareh," "shukhi," or "latifeh" means exactly the same).
- The First Three Centuries
- Rumi, Sa'di, Hafiz
- Obeyd Zakani (c. 1300-1370)
- From Old Classics to Neoclassics (15th to 18th Centuries)
- The Neoclassical Period: Bazgasht-e Adabi in the 19th Century
- Iraj and Bahar
- Dehkhoda and Eshghi
- Aref, Seyyed Ashraf, E'tesami, Rouhani, Bibi Khanom
- Satirical Fiction
- The Satirical Press
As a side note, "Homa" is usually a female name in Persian, but Dr. Homa Katouzian [1942-] is a man who uses the literary name "Homa" as a shorthand for "Homayoun."
2024/01/25 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Convertible chair/step-ladder I bought from Amazon: The design idea is neat, but the assembly instructions are exclusively in Chinese. I have decided to return the item but fear that shipping it to China may cost me a fortune! [Center] Our Earth, viewed from a different perspective: Centered at the North Pole, this map tells us that the US and Russia are closer to each other than we generally think and highlights the immensity of the Pacific Ocean. [Right] Talangor Group talk (see the last item below).
(2) Several countries are studying near-Earth asteroids using space probes: One threatening asteroid, which is the size of a football stadium, will fly by very close to Earth in 2029 and may crash into the Pacific Ocean on its next visit in 2036, triggering a tsunami that destroys the US West Coast and Hawaii.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- NASA's Ingenuity will fly no more: A broken rotor blade seals the fate of the first copter to fly on Mars.
- How the merger of two neutron stars that occurred 130 million years ago was detected in 2022.
- Jon Stewart is returning to executive-produce "The Daily Show" and to host it on Monday nights.
- Racing cars on sloped roads: Straight-line road isn't the fastest. [Tweet, with animation]
- Farhang Foundation's Nowruz Concert in Orange County, California, March 23, 2024.
- Throwback Thursday: Frank Sinatra's 1975 concert in Iran; I was there and remember the event fondly.
(4) "Pale Blue Dot" refers to a photo of Earth taken by Voyager 1 space probe in 1990 from a distance of ~3.7 billion miles, as it was leaving our solar system. It has come to signify our small place in the universe.
(5) Tonight's Talangor Group talk: Dr. Towfigh Heidarzadeh (UC Riverside) spoke about "Critical Thinking in Science: Demarcating Science, Pseudo-Science, Anti-Science, and Superstition." Before the main talk, yours truly made a short presentation on "Doublespeak in Science and Technology." There were ~95 attendees.
Demarcation of science and pseudoscience is important, both theoretically and from a practical standpoint (should the government invest in telepathy or alternative medicine?). Pseudoscience tends to impede the progress of science. Science is a complicated system/network. We cannot produce new science without relying on all that has gone before us.
Superstition is a belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic, or false conception of causation. Pseudoscience is similar to superstition, but it uses scientific terms in order to legitimize non-scientific conclusions. Pseudoscience lacks evidence and isn't reproducible or falsifiable. Anti-science denies the legitimacy of science altogether, citing certain errors in previous scientific hypotheses to cast doubt on everything scientific.
2024/01/24 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Bike paths not prioritized (see the next item below). [Top center] MagQuest seeks new global magnetic map: A more-accurate magnetic map would help make the adjustments needed to find true north. [Top right] Tonight's IEEE CCS tech talk (see the last item below). [Bottom left] Math puzzle: What fraction of the square's area is shaded green? [Bottom center] Math puzzle: In this diagram with a regular hexagon and two squares, what fraction of the hexagon's area is shaded purple? [Bottom right] Math puzzle: In this diagram, what is the length of the blue line segment?
(2) On UCSB campus, today: This space between the campus library and the new ILP classroom building used to host a bike path. After building ILP, a walkway and landscaping replaced the bike path, making the bike parking area to the east of ILP nearly inaccessible from the west side of the campus. Predictably, students ride along the walkway to get to the parking area. Ironically, the space is wide enough to accommodate both a bike path and a walkway.
(3) Credit/debit-card fraud is rampant: A couple of days ago, I received notice from my bank that an attempted use of one of my cards at a jewelry business had been declined. They wanted to know whether I had initiated the transaction, which I had not. My card has been invalidated as a precautionary measure and is being replaced with a new card. Stay alert!
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Biggest aircraft cleared for flight: The massive 400-foot air-transport is allowed to fly up to 1500 feet high.
- Lithium extraction gets faster & greener: New technologies double production while reducing pollution.
- World's first road with an EV charging lane is being built in Sweden.
- World Music Series: Mariachi Las Olas de Santa Barbara performed at UCSB today.
[Video 1]
[Video 2]
(5) Tonight's IEEE Central Coast Section tech talk: Nicholas Hogasten (Technical Fellow, Teledyne FLIR, Goleta) spoke under the title "Video Signal Processing for Thermal Imaging Applications."
Thermal Imaging presents interesting video signal processing problems. The speaker reviewed some of these problems & their potential solutions. The main purpose of the presentation was to get students or early-career scientist excited about the possibilities of thermal imaging, but anyone curious about sensing in more exotic wavebands learned something. Some basics on why thermal imagers have different properties and challenges compared with typical reflected-light imagers and signal-reconstruction solutions to overcome those problems were discussed. The talk also touched upon some physical-world phenomenology for LWIR/MWIR imagers.
2024/01/23 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] The Milky Way Galaxy, as seen in the dark sky of Iran's Semnan Province. [Top center] This is our beautiful Golden State, California. [Top right] The city of Ardebil in Iran, at the base of the majestic Sabalan Mt. [Bottom left] If you crave lentil-rice (Persian "adas-polo") and don't feel like making it from scratch, Trader Joe's can help. [Bottom center] Math puzzle: In this diagram with 3 squares, what is the area of the yellow triangle? [Bottom right] Sorina Higgins' book on C. S. Lewis (see the last item below).
(2) Tim Scott and Ron DeSantis have endorsed Trump. Nikki Haley says she will pardon him if elected President. Go ahead, vote them in, if you crave a crime spree at the highest level!
(3) Harmful datasets to be removed: The UC Office of the President has directed all UC locations to remove the LAION-5B dataset from campus devices and networks. The Large-scale Artificial Intelligence Open Network (LAION) is a non-profit that creates open-source machine learning tools frequently used by AI researchers for the purpose of training AI models. The datasets are thought to contain harmful or illegal content.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- California State University faculty began their systemwide strike on Monday (and ended it on Tuesday).
- Oscar nominations: "Oppenheimer" leads the way with 13 nods. [Full list]
- Today's New Hampshire primary may be the last stand for Nikki Haley and anti-Trump forces.
- Building a large restaurant from a food truck within minutes. [Tweet, with video]
(5) Course review: Higgins, Sorina, C. S. Lewis: Writer, Scholar, Seeker, Six lectures in the Great Courses series, Audible Originals, 2023.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Clive Staples Lewis [1898-1963], who went by the name "Jack" to his family and "C. S." professionally, was a prolific writer who wrote in multiple genres (children's books, sci-fi, theological reflections, and scholarly works), but he is best-known for his 7-volume "Chronicles of Narnia" series. Interestingly, Lewis did not have children of his own and he began writing his children's series relatively late in life.
For Chronicles, he originally had only one story in mind, "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe." Ideas for additional volumes came to him in dreams. He wrote the seven volumes chronologically out of order. After his death, publishers chose to number the volumes in chronological order, with the prequel "The Magician's Nephew" issued as Volume 1, but C. S. Lewis's fans prefer his original production order.
Lewis lost his mother early on and was sent to a boarding school by his detached father. He later married an older woman, who had children his age. In a way, he took as his lover a woman who filled the gap left by the loss of his mother. Lewis, who was an atheist through his 20s, befriended several of his contemporary writers, including J. R. R. Tolkien, and became a religious man in part owing to their influence.
The six lectures in this wonderful course cover various aspects of Lewis's life and written work.
Lecture 1. Little Boy Jack: Childhood and Narnia
Lecture 2. A Life of Loss and Joy (bio and life philosophy)
Lecture 3. Hearing and Telling the Greatest Story (his religious conversion)
Lecture 4. Theological Fiction
Lecture 5. The Ransom Cycle (his sci-fi/space trilogy)
Lecture 6. Literary Criticism (his academic publications)
2024/01/21 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Santa Barbara the beautiful: Ads for real-estate agencies (not my photos). [Top center] Los Angeles' first freeway is hopelessly outdated—and dangerous, due to narrow lanes and super-short on- and off-ramps—but people love it. The first portion of the historic Arroyo Seco Freeway, connecting Pasadena to downtown LA, opened in 1940 and had a speed limit of 45 mph. [Top right] Earth's beautiful nature: From various Internet travel ads (not my photos). [Bottom left] Meme of the day: Stop War! [Bottom center] Math puzzle: Find the ratio r/R of the radius of the yellow circle to the radius of the orange quarter-circle. [Bottom right] Book talk on history of satire and humor in Iran (see the last item below).
(2) On punctuality: If you join a webinar and at 11:05 you get the message "Wait, the webinar starts at 11:00 and at 11:10 they are still playing elevator music, you know that it is organized by Iranians!
(3) Capturing the dynamics of long-term changes: The camera that is designed to take a single image of a Tucson, AZ, landscape over the next 1000 years.
(4) Why you can't tickle yourself: According to The Accidental Mind, a fascinating book I am reading, the cerebellum predicts our sensations and signals other brain regions to subtract the "expected" sensation from the "total" sensation, making the "net" sensation near-zero. This relativism is helpful because the brain should focus on unexpected sensations, which may correspond to danger. We now know that some humans who sustain damage to the cerebellum are unable to generate predictions and can thus tickle themselves.
(5) Today's University of Toronto book talk: Dr. Homa Katouzian (economist, historian, political scientist, literary critic; U. Oxford) spoke under the title "Humor in Iran: Eleven-Hundred Years of Satire and Humor in Persian Literature." The talk was based on a 2024 I. B. Tauris book by the same title. There were ~130 attendees. As a side note, "Homa" is usually a female name in Persian, but Dr. Homa Katouzian [1942-] is a man who uses the literary name "Homa" as a shorthand for "Homayoun."
Combining Persian original texts with some English translations, the book, which is aimed at both scholars and ordinary readers, covers 11 centuries of satire, irony, & humor in Persian verse & prose. The Persian literary tradition includes various forms of humor, from the coarse and obscene to the subtle and refined. The sources range from Ferdowsi's epic Shahnameh, master satirists such as Obeyd Zakani, Sa'di, Rumi, Khayyam, Hafiz, Anvari, Sana'i, Khaqani, Suzani, Qa'ani, & Yaghma, ending with 20th-century authors such as Iraj, Dehkhoda, Bahar, Eshqi, Aref, Hedayat, Jamalzadeh, & Al-e Ahmad.
2024/01/20 (Saturday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Marall Nasiri wrote the names of 71 Iranian women political prisoners on her body as she accepted an acting award in Sweden. [Top center] New Yorker cartoon of the day: "Everyone on this stage is committed to a future of net-zero income-tax payments." [Top right] For years, Israelis have debated whether it's a good idea to deploy women soldiers on the front lines, given the atrocities they may face in the event of being captured. As discussion goes on, these women soldiers continue to serve as before. [Bottom left] A family picnic in rural Iran. [Bottom center] The S&P 500 index hits an all-time high, as it inches toward 5000 (NYT chart). [Bottom right] Today's talk on poet Sohrab Sepehri (see the last item below)
(2) Rain can't dampen women's "Call to Action": The 8th annual Women's March took place in Santa Barbara this evening, with the goal "to unite and mobilize our community to take a stand against the assault on women's rights and democracy." I feel guilty for skipping the event today for the first time since its inception, but here is our local ABC affiliate's report on the event.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Japan became the fifth country to set down a spacecraft on the Moon.
- AlphaGeometry AI program performs on par with gold-medalists in solving Olympiad geometry problems.
- In 2024, US domestic airfares will fall, while international flights will become more expensive. [NYT]
- Museum pieces: I must be one of the last people to get rid of my landline phone service! [Tweet, with photo]
(4) Today's Farhang-Foundation/UCSB talk: Dr. Fatemeh Shams (social literary historian & poet, U. Penn) spoke under the title "Sohrab Sepehri's Modernist Mission."
Sohrab Sepehri (1928-1980) is celebrated by some as one of Iran's greatest poets who inspired experimentalist modernist poets of his generation. He has also been criticized as being aloof and detached from societal realities. Dr. Shams introduced Sepehri's modernist mission and tried to rehabilitate the importance of his oeuvre by focusing on the between-ness and otherness that is central to his work.
Through a close reading of Sepehri' s Eight Books (Hasht Ketaab), Dr. Shams elaborated on ways in which Sepehri transcended the rigid boundaries of ideology and dialectical identity by inviting the reader into an imaginative space of aesthetic, existential, epistemological fluidity, and freedom.
Dr. Shams recited several of Sepehri's poems, including "A Garden in Sound," in Persian, while showing her English translations of the verses on projected slides. Sepehri's poetry has become very popular in post-Revolution Iran, because his words provide people refuge from hardships and oppression.
P.S.: Writing in The New Yorker, Neima Jahromi discusses Sohrab Sepehri's poetry, under the title "Poetry and Politics in Iran."
2024/01/18 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Throwback Thursday (1): The entrance of Bagh-e Golshan Cafe in Tehran's Shah-Abad Ave., opposite Sepahsalar Garden. The restaurant was open past midnight and featured live musical entertainment by popular singers of the day. [Center] Math puzzle: Find the ratio of the areas of the squares. [Right] Throwback Thursday (2): My aunt Soury's family, shortly after they immigrated to Israel in the 1940s.
(2) Berkeley Lecture Series (in Persian): Dr. Nayereh Tohidi will speak under the title "Iran in a Transformative Process by Woman, Life, Freedom." Sunday, Jan. 21, 2024, 11:00 AM PST. [In-person and on Zoom]
(3) Iran's Supreme Leader advocates for a referendum among Palestinians to choose their form of government, but when it comes to Iran, he maintains that lay people aren't sophisticated enough to choose properly.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Retaliating for Iran's missile strikes, Pakistan attacks several points in Saravan, southeastern Iran.
- Persian music: Mostafa Maddahi sings & plays the tar, as the song's composer weeps in the audience.
- Persian music: Viguen performs "Mahtab," his own composition, with lyrics by Nasser Rastegar-Nejad.
- Piano maestro Anoushirvan Rohani and singer Homayoun Shajarian in a January 2024 Toronto concert.
- Wednesday's World Music Series concert by Los Catanes del Norte. [Video 1] [Video 2]
- A scene from the Iranian film "Tomorrow Is Bright," in which singer Delkash performs her own song.
(5) It appears that Supreme Leader Khamenei is trying to goad the US into bombing Iran in order to deflect attention from his regime's many political and economic failings.
(6) Colossus' 80th anniversary: The British Colossus was the first computer to decode German messages for the Allied forces during World War II and is credited by many experts for shortening the war.
(7) Interlinked Computing in 2040: Part of the cover feature of IEEE Computer magazine's January 2024 issue, focusing on safety, truth, ownership, and accountability.
(8) End of tenure at universities? Nebraska is the latest US state to propose legislation for ending tenure at public colleges. The merits of tenure or lack thereof can and has been debated extensively, with meritorious arguments on both sides. However, there will be serious financial implications if some colleges end tenure while others keep it. Colleges that ditch tenure will have to offer much higher salaries to keep and attract talent. For decades, faculty salaries have been much lower than those of industrial positions requiring comparable qualifications. Colleges without tenure will be in direct competition with industry for talent.
2024/01/16 (Tuesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] Iran's two-faced Islamic regime: One official says that hijabless women have the right to vote (to boost participation figures). Another says the government has banned offering services to hijabless women. [Top center] Iranian architecture: The Ameri-ha Historical House, Kashan, Iran, was built in the second half of the 18th century. The massive house covers 9000 square meters and has 85 rooms, two bath-houses, and 7 courtyards adorned with gardens and fountains. [Top right] A humbling space fact: Removing the Earth from the Milky Way Galaxy doesn't change it a bit. [Bottom left] Then (2018) and now (2024): Facebook-generated post. [Bottom center] Math puzzle: In this diagram with two circles of known areas, what is the square's area? (Note: Diagram not to scale) [Bottom right] John MacCormick's What Can Be Computed (see the next item below).
(2) Book review: MacCormick, John, What Can Be Computed? A Practical Guide to the Theory of Computation, Princeton, 2018.
[My 4-star review of this course on GoodReads]
Theory of computation is the primary link between computer science and mathematics. Because of its requirement for rigor, theory of computation is often considered to be inaccessible to those who are not mathematically trained. This book attempts to bridge the gap by maintaining mathematical rigor in discussing topics in the theory of computation, while also linking the concepts to practical applications by encouraging active experimentation via computer programs in Python and Java.
Fundamental notions of the field, including Turing machines, finite automata, universal computation, nondeterminism, Turing & Karp reductions, undecidability, and complexity classes, including P & NP, are covered, as are the connections between undecidability and Godel's incompleteness theorem and Karp's famous set of 21 NP-complete problems. The presentation makes the field, usually the purview of graduate courses, accessible to undergraduate students.
The book essentially answers the following question affirmatively: "Is there anything that computers will never be able to do, no matter how fast the hardware or how smart the algorithms?" This verdict is in contrast to Rene Descartes famous statement: "There cannot be any [truths] that are so remote that they are not eventually reached nor so hidden that they are not discovered."
The book is subdivided into an overview (Chapter 1) and two parts: Computability Theory (Chapters 2-9) and Computational Complexity Theory (Chapters 10-14).
- Introduction: What Can and Cannot Be Computed?
- What Is a Computer Program?
- Some Impossible Python Programs
- What Is a Computational Problem?
- Turing Machines: The Simplest Computers
- Universal Computer Programs: Programs that Can Do Anything
- Reductions: How to Prove a Problem Is Hard
- Nondeterminism: Magic or Reality?
- Finite Automata: Computing with Limited Resources
- Complexity Theory: When Efficiency Does Matter
- Ply and Expo: The Two Most Fundamental Complexity Classes
- PolyCheck and NPoly: Hard Problems that Are Easy to Verify
- Polynomial-Time Mapping Reductions: Proving X Is as Easy as Y
- NP-Completeness: Most Hard Problems Are Equally Hard
2024/01/15 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left & center] Today, we honor the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, among whose memorable statements is the following: "We need leaders not in love with money, but in love with justice. Not in love with publicity, but in love with humanity." [Top right] Israel is the only country in the Middle East to name a street after MLK, who was a Zionist. [Bottom left] Reporters who were imprisoned for exposing the death of #MahsaAmini (see the next item below). [Bottom center] Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1969 (55 years ago) and in 2022. [Bottom right] Understanding the Brain (see the last item below).
(2) Islamic Republic of Iran: A country where insider criminals get away with a slap on the wrist but those reporting on crimes serve long prison terms. These two women, who reported on the death of #MahsaAmini while in custody of the Morality Police, were just released from prison temporarily by posting huge bails and were immediately charged with new "crimes" for going hijabless! [#WomanLifeFreedom]
(3) "And Kill Them Wherever You Find Them": Name of Islamic State's operation for solidarity with Gaza. The suicide bombing at Qasem Soleimani's memorial in Iran was the first step of this operation.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Ron DeSantis is 2nd in Iowa & Nikki Haley finishes 3rd: 4th-place Vivek Ramaswamy ends his campaign.
- Nobel Peace Laureate Narges Mohammadi's prison sentence is extended by the Mullahs' regime in Iran.
- Full list of Emmy Awards: "The Bear" and "Succession" led with 6 wins each, while "Beef" followed with 5.
- An iPhone sucked out of a missing door in an Alaska Airlines mishap survived 16,000-foot fall to the ground.
(5) SAT seems to be winning the war waged on it: Highly-selective colleges are slowly returning to requiring SAT scores, citing their strong correlation with college performance, as measured by academic GPA.
(6) Elsevier journal Microprocessors and Microsystems has retracted all articles in a 2021 special issue guest-edited by Vimal Shanmuganathan, citing substandard rigor in the peer-review process.
(7) Course review: Norden, Jeanette, Understanding the Brain, 36 lectures in the Great Courses Series, The Teaching Company, undated. [My 4-star review of this course on GoodReads]
This course, designed and taught by Professor Jeanette Norden (School of Medicine, Vanderbilt U.), begins with "Historical Underpinnings of Neuroscience" (Lecture 1) and ends with "Neuroscience—Looking Back and Looking Ahead" (Lecture 36), visiting along the way topics such as brain structure, central nervous system, neurotransmitters, stroke, visual & auditory systems, depression, the reward system, brain plasticity, emotion & executive function, sleep & dreaming, consciousness, Alzheimer's, and effects of stress.
On this Web page you can find a list of lecture titles and a brief description of each lecture.
2024/01/14 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] So, you say the January 6 insurrection wasn't planned? How do you explain these T-shirts? [Center] New Yorker cartoon of the day: Snow White and her agent, accountant, lawyer, life coach, personal assistant, publicist, and stylist. [Right] IranWire cartoon of the day: The Ayatollah and his lash.
(2) North Korea is rated as the world's most-hellish country: Afghanistan is second. The Taliban are just as brutal, but they don't have a competent security apparatus. The documentary "Beyond Utopia," filmed on iPhones and currently vying for an Oscar nomination, chronicles a family's secret escape out of North Korea.
(3) With each new technology, we hear claims that it will revolutionize education: Yet, by and large, we still teach through a teacher meeting in-person with a number of students. What gives?
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Tal Becker's speech on behalf of Israel at the international court considering accusations of genocide.
- Today's amazing science fact: Electromagnetism explained via special relativity.
- Dangerous elevators: A small number of Paternoster or doorless lifts are still operating in parts of Germany.
- A new rendition of an old popular song from southwestern Iran. [1-minute video]
(5) With the lowering of dammed reservoirs on Klamath River, the largest dam removal project in US history entered a critical phase this week.
(6) Zero-proof bars are sprouting across the country: Non-alcoholic brews and spirits serve customers who seek out health & wellness alternatives in their drinking routines. At $400 million in annual sales, they form a tiny share of the market right now, but they are projected to grow to about 30% of the total market.
(7) Best-Presentation Award: My January 9, 2024, talk at the IEEE 14th Annual Computing and Communication Workshop and Conference was honored with a Best-Presentation Award. Here's a 14-minute recording of the practice version of my talk entitled "Recursive Implementation of Voting Networks." And here's the PDF paper.
(8) The next real estate crisis is looming: Empty offices in NYC and other major urban centers, along with ~40% price drop since the pandemic, are about to crush big banks, who are kicking the can down the road.
(9) American neurosurgeon Ali Rezai is pioneering ways to try to help people with drug addiction and with Alzheimer's disease. One experiment focuses beams of ultrasound on the brain.
2024/01/12 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] The magnificent Dimond Head Volcano in Hawaii. [Top center] How war is spreading in the Middle East: New York Times infographic. [Top right] Promising information technologies for 2024 (see the next item below). [Bottom left] Lost city in the upper Amazon unearthed: The dense system of pre-Hispanic urban centers consists of an anthropized landscape with clusters of monumental platforms, plazas, and wide streets running over great distances, intertwined with extensive agricultural drainages and terraces. Period of occupation: From about 500 BCE to 300-600 CE. [Bottom center] Would-be dictator Donald Trump marches ahead, despite criminal indictments, civil lawsuits, and criticism from "mainstream" Republicans. [Bottom right] In this image, Earth is compared in size to the much larger Jupiter, which has a diameter of ~11 times that of Earth, giving it a volume of ~1300x.
(2) IEEE Computer Society's 2024 Technology Predictions Report: The domains of predictions, listed in order from high-potential (graded A/B) to low-potential (graded C/D), include generative AI applications, next-generation AI, advances in cybersecurity, managing misinformation, remote healthcare, digital twins for vertical applications, new 3D printing applications, new programming models, Reliability, autonomic autonomous and hybrid systems, energy resources for powering data centers, sustainable ICT, regenerative agri-tech, non-terrestrial networks, new battery chemistry and architecture, low-power AI accelerators, alternate material for electro machines, alternate materials for electro machines, cost-effective recycling of batteries, metaverse, accessible quantum computing, and satellite (constellation) recycling.
(3) A question about time: Lines of longitude on Earth demark time (every 15 degrees is one time zone). But these lines all meet at the poles. So, what time is it at the poles?
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Harvard accused in federal lawsuit of not protecting Jewish students against intimidation and harassment.
- US FDA scientists recommend that the feds remove marijuana from its most restrictive category of drugs.
- Tomorrow's presidential election in Taiwan is more about economic woes than the threat from China.
- How we used to calculate pi and how Newton simplified the process by a series of brilliant discoveries.
- Periodic & aperiodic tilings of the plane and their relationship to crystals no one thought could exist.
- Ancient city, with sophisticated networks of roads & canals, found under vegetation in Amazon Forest.
(5) Today's surprising space fact: The first human-made object to reach space was Soviet Union's satellite Sputnik 1, which was launced on October 4, 1957.
(6) Get to know Donald Trump: His lawyer argued in court this week that former presidents are immune from prosecution even for any murders they ordered while in office. [New York Times report]
(7) Samantha Rose Hill, Hana Arendt biographer, explains how Arendt's writings on evil and totalitarianism found new popularity after the election of Donald Trump in 2016. [Video]
(8) An insightful analysis of the political dilemma facing American Muslims: After 9/11, American Muslims formed progressive alliances, leaving their Republican ties behind, despite the fact that their religious leaders remained staunchly conservative. Hamas atrocities of 10/7 again challenges their political leanings.
2024/01/11 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Throwback Thursday: Baccarat Cabaret in Tehran, Iran, 1974. Believe it or not, families frequented the cabaret, located in the basement of Atlantic Cinema on Pahlavi Avenue. It was more like a restaurant with entertainment than a genuine cabaret. [Center] Tonight's Talangor Group talk on emotional machiavellism (see the next item below). [Right] Liz Cheney's Oath and Honor (see the last item below).
(2) Tonight's Talangor Group talk: Dr. Arash Taghavi spoke under the title "Emotional Machiavellism: An Introduction to Emotional Deception." Before the main talk, Dr. Ryan Homafar gave a short presentation on "Justice and Politics," in which he pondered the question of whether justice can be viewed as a necessity of politics, that is, a right, rather than a moral nicety, viz. an optional add-on. There were ~75 attendees.
Emotional manipulation is common in sociopolitical settings and in personal relationships. We try to emotionally manipulate others for three reasons: Gaining benefits; Maintaining power; Avoiding responsibility. Religions manipulate their followers by inducing guilt. Other methods used include threatening, gaslighting, invoking pity, and tantalizing (deceptive praise).
We all manipulate others emotionally and are manipulated in return to some extent. So, learning the signs of emotional manipulation is important to our well-being. Many of us Iranians have had emotionally manipulative parents. However, rather than blaming such parents, we should recognize that they are products of their upbringing and experiences. It is up to us to protect ourselves against such manipulations.
Lack of susceptibility to emotional manipulation is a sign of emotional maturity.
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Donald Trump: "January 6 was a beautiful day." Vote for him if you want more such beautiful days!
- US missiles hit Houthi targets, after the Iran-backed group threatened shipping safety in the Red Sea.
- Quote of the day: "Illusion of knowledge is more dangerous than ignorance." ~ Physicist Richard Feynman
- The Drake Passage at the southern tip of South America and other dangerous waters of the Antarctic Circle.
(4) Book review: Cheney, Liz, Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning, unabridged 12-hour audiobook, read by the author, Little, Brown & Company, 2023. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
This is an important book, telling the story of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, interwoven with biographical information about Liz Cheney's life in Wyoming and Washington, DC, as well as about her father, former US Vice President Dick Cheney.
>Oath and Honor is as much an indictment of Donald Trump as it is a slap at her fellow-Republicans, who enabled and excused his immoral and narcissistic behavior. Cheney names multiple cowardly Republicans who publicly supported Trump out of political expediency, while criticizing him in private.
The writing is straightforward and at times repetitive. Cheney's tone is angry, which is quite natural, given what she went through before and after she served on the House Select Committee. She fell out of love with the Republican party she previously adored. Cheney was stripped of her leadership position in the House
Republican caucus and was later defeated in her re-election bid by a Trump-endorsed candidate.
The "warning" part of the book is about the real danger of Trump returning to the White House and completing what he couldn't do during his first term, because even his hand-picked officials and aides didn't go along with his crazy, anti-Constitutional schemes. The lies that Trump and his collaborators continue to perpetuate, and their schemes to get rid of public servants in the government, constitute real and present danger to the US democratic institutions and traditions.
As I write this review, Donald Trump faces 91 felony counts in federal and state courts, as well as multiple civil lawsuits, which may land him in jail and/or ruin him financially. Yet his support base continues to be strong, as if nothing has happened. The year 2024 will be a real test of the US system of justice and its safeguards against authoritarian tendencies in our leaders. If we emerge unscathed from this challenge, it is in no small part due to the courage exhibited by Liz Cheney.
2024/01/10 (Wednesday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Socrates Think Tank talk on modernity (see the next item below). [Center] Father of the Internet, Robert Kahn, recognized with an IEEE Medal of Honor: Medals also given to other pioneers. [Right] Robert M. Sapolsky's Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will (see the last item below).
(2) Tonight's Socrates Think Tank talk: Dr. Abdi Modarressi spoke under the title "Musings/Inquiries on Modernity." There were ~145 attendees.
Modernity has two aspects: Physical modernization (renewal) and cultural modernity (enlightenment). Physical modernization and cultural modernity do not necessarily go hand in hand. The related term "modernism" refers to the manifestation of modernity in art styles.
Most societies, regardless of their development level, have embraced physical modernization (what the speaker called the "hardware" dimension of modernity). Physical modernization has no cultural prerequisites and can bring benefits to societies, whether or not they understand the technology and regardless of their ability to create the technology locally.
Cultural modernity (the "software" dimension) is a lot trickier and few societies outside Europe, the birthplace of modernity, have been able to achieve it (Japan being a notable exception). Iran had several opportunities, including during the Golden Age of Eastern Science & Arts and after the Constitutional Revolution, to make headway in this regard, but reactionary forces prevailed in both instances.
(3) US FDA issues a nationwide alert against taking tianeptine: Also known as "gas station heroine" (because it is sold at many gas-station convenience stores), the substance had been associated with overdoses and deaths.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Each container of bottled water contains hundreds of thousands of microscopic pieces of plastic.
- Work done 35 years ago in Macedonia to control a robot with brain waves honored as an IEEE Milestone.
- Congrats to Janet Afary & Kamran Afary for winning a second book prize for their Molla Nasreddin.
- Facebook memory from Jan. 10, 2018: The day when US 101 near Santa Barbara looked like a river.
(5) Today's surprising space fact: The largest volcano in the solar system is Olympus Mons on Mars. It has a height 3 times that of Mt. Everest.
(6) Book review: Sapolsky, Robert M., Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will, unabridged 17-hour audiobook, read by Kaelo Griffith, Penguin Audio, 2023. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
The book's intentionally ambiguous title reflects the two parts of its message: The science of why there is no free will and the science of how we can best live once we accept this fact.
I have recently reviewed two concise books on free will or lack thereof. In 96 pages, Sam Harris argues persuasively that free will is an inherently flawed and incoherent concept (my review). As I wrote in my review of Free Will: A Very Short Introduction (132 pp.), Western philosophers holding various views on the topic of free will are classified, roughly, as incompatibilists, compatibilists, sceptics, and libertarians.
- Incompatibilists believe that the whole universe is defined by causal determinism, making free will impossible. All of our actions have root causes that are beyond our control. Put another way, free will is incompatible with determinism. Therefore, some philosophers reject causal determinism.
- Compatibilists think that even if we accept causal determinism, we can still have freedom of action, because only the decision to act is generated deterministically, not the ensuing voluntary action itself.
- Sceptics subscribe to incompatibilism but think that even if the universe is not causally determined, it is impossible to act freely, since what is left is chance. In other words, actions are random outcomes of chance events, with will playing no role.
- Libertarians believe that a universe determined in part causally and in part randomly leaves room for the freedom to decide on the actions taken. Alongside random & deterministic factors which make up the universe, there is a part of the human consciousness which decides independently. This kind of free will is neither a product of chance nor a consequence of a deterministic cause, but an agent of action itself.
Sapolsky begins by discussing the four viewpoints above, as well as their various shades and combinations, relating each category to moral responsibility & punishment, and continuing with the declaration that his goal "isn't to convince you that there is no free will; it will suffice if you merely conclude that there's so much less free will than you thought that you have to change your thinking about some truly important things."
He then presents quite a few arguments against the existence of free will. Some of the provocatively-titled chapters include "Willing Willpower: The Myth of Grit," "Is Your Free Will Random?" and "The Joy of Punishment." The "Appendix: Neuroscience 101" offers a capsule review of neurons and how they function, so that neuroscientific arguments against free will can be better understood.
2024/01/08 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Top left] A few Iranian women TV announcers/hosts from the pre-Revolution period. [Top center & right] Roya Heshmati, an Iranian woman who was punished with 74 lashes for refusing to wear the hijab, tells her story. [Bottom left] Celebrating my grand-nephew Aiden's first birthday over the weekend. [Bottom center] Math puzzle: Find the area of the square. [Bottom right] Remembering some of the victims of Ukranian Airlines Flight PS752 (see the last item below).
(2) NASA launches its first Moon-landing mission in 50+ years: The uncrewed commercial spacecraft is expected to land on the Moon on February 23, 2024.
(3) From time to time, I am surprised with the success of one of my social-media posts: A repost about a large language model trained in Persian at U. Tehran received more than 18,000 impressions on LinkedIn. [Image]
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Boosting productivity and avoiding overload by streamlining the set of tech tools you use. [Report]
- The complete list of 2024 Golden Globes winners: "Oppenheimer" shines with 5 awards.
- A survey of ~3000 AI researchers indicates a 5% chance that AI will drive humans extinct.
- Santa Barbara Channel Islands history finds a home in Carpinteria.
- A few celebs reaching milestone birthdays (60th, 70th, and 80th). [Image from AARP Magazine]
- Ringo Starr continues the musical tradition of the Fab Four. [Image from AARP Magazine]
(5) Today's surprising space fact: The temperature on the surface of the Moon varies drastically. It ranges from a low of –173 Celsius at night to a high of 127 Celsius during the day.
(6) A final thought, on the fourth anniversary of the downing of Ukrainian Airlines Flight PS752: "Today marks 4 years since the tragic passing of our beloved colleague and co-founder of this lab, Prof. Mojgan Daneshmand, along with her husband Prof. Pedram Mousavi and their daughters, Daria and Dorina." This is how University of Alberta remembers a co-founder of its Microwave, Millimeter-Wave, and MetaDevices (M3) Laboratory.
2024/01/07 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Film screening at UCLA (see the next item below). [Center] The exquisite tiling pattern of Nasir-ol-Molk Mosque, Shiraz, Iran. [Right] A talk on intellectualism in Iran (see the last item below).
(2) UCLA Bilingual Lecture Series on Iran: Maryam Sepehri's 86-minute documentary film "Alborz: We Climb Mountains" will be screened in Royce Hall 314. I won't be able to attend and write a report, so I am sharing the information for those who might be interested. [Sepehri's YouTube Channel]
(3) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- US FDA authorizes Florida to import medications from Canada, where prices are significantly lower.
- Alaska Airlines grounds its 737 Max 9 fleet after one plane lost part of its fuselage during flight.
- Siberia is warming at twice the rate of the Earth: Melting permafrost uncovers history & ancient viruses.
- Astronauts on the International Space Station witness around 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets every day.
- Regional actor Kim Sullivan made it to the big time when he debuted on Broadway at age 70. [Image]
(4) Today's surprising space fact: The Sun is so massive that it accounts for 99.86% of the total mass of our solar system. Its mass is 330,000 greater than the mass of Earth.
(5) Bonus surprising space fact for today: The largest black hole discovered so far is TON 618. Its mass is estimated to be about 66 billion times that of our Sun.
(6) "Intellectualism": As part of UCSalamat series of talks, Dr. Mohammad B. Bagheri presented a continuation of the discussion he began on December 3, 2023. [My report on the first part]
Dr. Bagheri began by reiterating some notions from the talk's first installment. An intellectual is a thinker who also has social concerns, as opposed to just sitting in an ivory tower. The two parts of the term "rowshan-fekr" (Persian for "intellectual"), that is, "rowshan" ("lit" or "bright") and "fekr" ("thought"), have positive connotations. Because of this, Iranians tend to be reluctant to apply the label to anyone who disagrees with them politically. Also, given the long history of dictatorial rule in the country, anyone who collaborates with the government is automatically removed from the circle of intellectuals.
There are three main categories of intellectuals in Iran.
- Western-leaning intellectuals want to bring a version of Western civilization to Iran. They were mistaken in thinking that importing symbols of modernity (household appliances, western-style universities) to Iran would be sufficient for social progress. Their advocacy of changing the Persian script to the Latin script led to a backlash against them. Taghizadeh and Foroughi are apt examples of this group.
- Religious intellectuals (an oxymoron?) subscribe to religious idealism. They believe that religion must play an important role in people's daily lives. This group took advantage of people's distrust of Western intellectuals to advance their agenda. Jalal Al-e Ahmad and Abdolkarim Soroush are good representative of this group. Khomeini-devotee students who raided the US Embassy in Tehran and took hostages fall into this category (the latter group also had Marxist leanings).
- Leftist intellectuals sneakily inserted their viewpoints into the slogans/goals of Iran's 1979 Revolution to gain more power. The deep religious influence among Iranians in the pre-Revolution Iran made people distrustful of leftist ideologies, represented by the Toudeh Party and also several militant leftist or leftist-Islamic groups. Even though many leftist intellectuals were killed by the Islamic regime, their numbers and influence remain strong.
Dr. Mohamad Bagher Bagheri has a Web site through which you can learn more about his background and gain access to YouTube videos of his lessons on critical thinking.
2024/01/06 (Saturday): Today, I offer book reviews on AI & pocket-calculator histories and global trade.
(1) Book review: Pickover, Clifford A., Artificial Intelligence: An Illustrated History—From Medieval Robots to Neural Networks, Union Square & Co., 2019. [My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Clifford Pickover has a knack for explaining scientific concept in easily-readable form, as evidenced by his many books in this domain. His book on the history of artificial intelligence is no exception. True to his style, Pickover describes major systems and milestones in the history of AI, with each of the ~100 concise entries accompanied by a full-page illustration.
All important developments, be they fictional ("The Terminator") or real (the Rumba robotic vacuum cleaner), receive a mention. The book can be read from cover to cover like a sumptuous meal or be explored by snacking on the entries that look inviting.
(2) Book review: Houston, Keith, Empire of the Sum: The Rise and Reign of the Pocket Calculator, unabridged 9-hour audiobook, read by Elliot Fitzpatrick, Tantor Audio, 2023.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Many members of my generation owned and admired their electronic pocket calculators, which, after dethroning the engineers' slide rules, were themselves unceremoniously replaced by much more powerful computing devices. Nevertheless, calculators did play an important role in the development and history of computing. I have fond memories of my very first electronic calculator, the fairly affordable HP-35, which I bought in 1972 during my grad-school days at UCLA.
Beginning with a history of counting and ancient calculating devices, Houston tracks down the origins of the modern electronic calculator, along with some interesting detours, like how Texas Instruments hijacked high school math curricula across the US by promoting its outdated calculator lines that were highly profitable.
(3) Book review: United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Value Creation and Capture: Implications for Developing Countries, UN Digital Economy Report, 2019.
[My 3-star review of this book on GoodReads]
The world's economic and social structures are being transformed by the rapid spread of digital technologies. The good news is that the digital economy is creating many opportunities for developing countries. But there are multiple pieces of bad news to worry about, particularly the widening digital divide and the benefits going disproportionately to a small number of countries, companies, and individuals.
It is imperative that the challenges just cited be addressed in these early years of the digital era, before the problems get out of hand. Success in this domain requires collecting statistics and empirical evidence and offering them as aids to decision-makers across the globe, as they try to adopt sound policies in the face of a fast-evolving digital economy comprising a moving target.
"This first edition of the Digital Economy Report—previously known as the Information Economy Report—examines the scope for value creation & capture in the digital economy by developing countries. It gives special attention to opportunities for these countries to take advantage of the data-driven economy as producers and innovators—but also to the constraints they face—notably with regard to digital data and digital platforms."
2024/01/05 (Friday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Math puzzle: Find the area of ABCD. [Center] Bill Gates and Paul Allen, founders of Microsoft, at Seattle's Lakeside High School, one of the few schools worldwide that owned an advanced Teletype Model 30 computer in 1968. [Right] The #MeToo Movement in Iran (see the last item below).
(2) First change in Microsoft Windows keyboard in three A newly-added key will launch Microsoft's AI chatbot, which is integrated into Word and other Office products. The software giant sees the key's addition as the entry point into the world of AI on the PC.
(3) Today's surprising space fact: The Voyager 2 spacecraft, launched in 1977, is the most-distant human-made object from Earth. It entered interstellar space in 2012.
(4) Oddities in the Iran explosion that killed 100+ at a ceremony marking the 4th anniversary of General Qasem Soleimani's assassination: None of his three children was in attendance. One of his daughters later said that she had a vision of her dad asking her not to attend! Soleimani's comrades, that is, other IRGC top generals, also skipped the ceremony. No high-level Iranian official, often paying lip service to Soleimani's influence & contributions, was in attendance. These facts make it more likely that Iran's Islamic regime had a hand in the massacre, to create a reason for cracking down on Sunni Muslims protesting their miserable living conditions in Iran's southeastern region. Iranians from all walks of life, particularly ethnic and religious minorities, are forgotten by the government, while billions of dollars in aid are given to Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and other proxy groups to wage war against Israel and the West.
(5) Book review: Yaghoobi, Claudia (editor), The #MeToo Movement in Iran: Reporting Sexual Violence and Harassment, I. B. Tauris, 2023.
[My 4-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Dr. Claudia Yaghoobi is a Roshan Institute Professor in Persian Studies and Director of the Center for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at UNC Chapel Hill. She has written and lectured widely on social and political issues in Iran, particularly the challenges facing women in a patriarchal and theocratic society.
What makes Iran's #MeToo movement remarkable is the reluctance of many victims of sexual violence to speak up, given that reporting on their experiences may subject them to more violence in the guise of "family honor."
Contributors to this edited volume contextualize the Iranian #MeToo activism within the long tradition of Iran's feminist movements and within the Middle East historical background in 9 chapters that are sandwiched between an introduction by the author and an afterword by Roger Friedland, Janet Afari, and Charlotte Hoppen.
Narratives of survival of sexual violence are often delegitimized due to the cultural structure that gives men exposed as rapists the power to dismiss their accusers as crazy or delusional, particularly given that the victims have not traditionally enjoyed much family or societal support. The problems faced by the survivors are multiplied when they belong to sexually or socially marginalized groups.
You can find the book's table of contents on the Bloomsbury Web site.
2024/01/04 (Thursday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Hope 2024 is off to a good start for you and your loved ones. If you are having problems in keeping your new-year resolutions or face other struggles, hang in there. Spring isn't too far away! [Center] Ancient statue of Ayatollah Jannati on display at the Louvre. [Right] Iranian mullahs proudly display their program to arm Hamas through Qasem Soleimani.
(2) A senior Hamas leader and two of his military aides killed by a drone strike in Beirut: Don't ask me why the Hamas leader was sheltered in Beirut, while his people are under Israeli attacks in Gaza.
(3) Iran previously used proxies to attack shipping vessels: Now, a one-way drone launched from Iran has hit CHEM PLUTO, a Japanese-owned chemical tanker. Additionally, an Iranian Navy ship has entered the Red Sea. The US may start sinking Iranian ships to deter additional attacks.
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- The year 2023 was the hottest on record, raising fears that global warming is actually accelerating.
- Islamic State takes credit for bombing at the anniversary observation of Qasem Soleimani.
- Harvard President Claudine Gay resigns under the pressure of mounting plagiarism accusations.
- Jeffrey Epstein killed himself in prison: But his list of clients is alive and may come out any day now.
- U. Tehran's NLP Lab has announced the availability of Llama 7b, a large language model trained in Persian.
- World's oldest land animal, a 400-pound tortoise on St. Helena Island, turns 191 (or more).
- Facebook memory from Jan. 4, 2014: With the kids, on the stairs leading to an Isla Vista beach.
- Facebook memory from Jan. 4, 2012: With the kids, on Santa Barbara's Stearns Wharf.
(5) Today's surprising space fact: The fastest-moving object in the universe is a pulsar, which rotates at a speed of about 43,000 revolutions per minute.
(6) Japan Airlines jet is engulfed in flames after colliding with another plane on the runway: All passengers and crew got out safely, but 5 people died on the smaller Coast Guard plane.
(7) It seems that finally middling criminals above foot-soldier rank are being prosecuted in the US: But those higher up are still walking free and continuing with their evil deeds.
(8) Vaclav Hovel, on fighting tyranny (not an exact quote): You don't have to march on the streets and risk the consequences. Just decide that you won't participate in any activity based on lies. Serve the truth and the regime of lies will collapse on its own.
(9) A. M. Turing Award honoree Niklaus Wirth [1934-2024] dead at 89: Among his many contributions to computer science & engineering were the formal separation of language syntax & semantics, the programming language Pascal, and wonderful books on data structures, algorithms, & programming. RIP.
2024/01/01 (Monday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] Welcoming the New Year 2024 (see the next item below). [Center] Math puzzle: Find the length x.
[Right] Free Will, by Sam Harris (see the last item below).
(2) Happy New Year! This is a message we repeat every year, but then find out that the new year is much like the old year: full of challenges and disappointments; injustices and heartbreaks; rough spots and dead ends. Same old same old, as they say. But there are signs that 2024 may actually be different. In the US, fat cats, who have dodged accountability for years, may finally face justice. We may see the end of the brutal Islamic regime in Iran. We may witness Ukrainians prevail over the big bully to their north. Let's not lose hope!
(3) My New-Year 2024 puzzle: Every year, as a new year number emerges, I try to form the numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, ... by putting math symbols (including parentheses) between its digits. In the case of 2024, I have been able to do this for numbers up to 28. The first five appear below as hints and the rest are left to you as puzzles!
0 = 2 + 0 + 2 – 4
1 = (2 + 0) * 2 / 4
2 = 2 + 0 * 2 * 4
3 = 2 ^ 0 – 2 + 4
4 = 2 * 0 * 2 + 4
(4) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Magnitde-7.6 quake in Japan causes damage, but the main threat seems to be from the resulting tsunamis.
- Ordinary Iranians suffer from poor air quality: Government officials use expensive air-purification systems.
- Iran's Supreme Leader claims that 20+ years ago, God spoke through his mouth to IRGC commanders.
- Cognitive behavioral therapy for those suffering from insomnia. [14-minute video]
(5) Today's surprising space fact: The Andromeda Galaxy is the closest spiral galaxy to our Milky Way. The two galaxies will collide in about 4 billion years, creating the new galaxy dubbed "Milkomeda."
(6) Book review: Harris, Sam, Free Will, Free Press, 96 pp., 2012.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Whether or not living beings are free to choose their thoughts and actions has been debated for centuries. A belief in free will seems to be essential for human survival. Thinking about law, politics, religion, public policy, intimate relationships, morality—as well as feelings of remorse or personal achievement—without first imagining that every person is the true source of his or her thoughts and actions, seemingly makes no sense.
The scientific consensus appears to be that free will is an illusion. However, we won't run into contradictions if we assume that we have free will (in fact, we almost need the illusion of free will to hold people accountable for their deeds or have any motivation at all), but evidence points in the opposite direction. As physical entities, our behavior (including thoughts) are governed by physical laws, so that our current state, a result of everything that has happened to us since the Big Bang, is theoretically enough to determine our future state.
In this short, easily-readable, and highly-personal book, Sam Harris, well-known for his books The End of Faith (2004), Letter to a Christian Nation (2006), The Moral Landscape (2010), Lying (2011), Waking Up (2014), and Making Sense (2020), provides a clear explanation of why free will is an inherently flawed and incoherent concept.
The intention to do one thing rather than another does not originate in consciousness. Using fMRI studies, neuroscientists have discovered that our brain activity indicates the choice we are going to make more than half-a-second before we become consciously aware that we will make that choice. Case closed!
This panel-discussion video is a good source for an introduction to free will.
2023/12/31 (Sunday): Presenting selected news, useful info, and oddities from around the Internet.
(1) Images of the day: [Left] My year in books, according to GoodReads: During 2023, I read and reviewed 113 books, with a total of 35,388 pages. The books ranged in length from 38 to 1388 pages, averaging 313 pages. On average, I gave the books a rating of 4.1 stars. [Center] Here come end-of-year lists of the best and the worst of 2023. [Right] To Infinity and Beyond, by Tyson & Walker (see the last item below).
(2) One-liners: Brief news headlines, happenings, memes, and other items of general interest.
- Update from 2023 to 2024 is in progress: Please wait. [Image]
- US Navy helicopters sink boats belonging to Yemeni Houthi rebels that attempted to hijack a cargo ship.
- Surf's up: Early afternoon on Saturday, 12/30, at Ventura Harbor Village Beach. [Video 1] [Video 2]
- Are you brave enough to drive on this floating bridge in China's Shizuguan Scenic Area?
- Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor: Part of a harp concert by Sophia Kiprskaya.
(3) Today's surprising space fact: The International Space Station, the largest human-made object in space, is the size of a football field. It travels at a speed of 17,500 miles per hour.
(4) Book review: Tyson, Neil deGrasse and Lindsey N. Walker, To Infinity and Beyond: A Journey of Cosmic Discovery, National Geographic, 2023.
[My 5-star review of this book on GoodReads]
Neil deGrasse Tyson [1958-] is an astrophysicist with a knack for science communication. Through his numerous public lectures, talk-show appearances, and the TV series "StarTalk," Tyson has established himself as a knowledgeable and witty astrophysicist who can explain the mysteries of the universe in the simplest possible terms. Tyson's co-author, Lindsey N. Walker, is a writer and senior producer at "StarTalk."
Let me begin my review by quoting a paragraph from the book's front flap: "The journey begins close to home, exploring Earth's atmosphere, the nature of sunlight, and missions past and present to nearby planets. From there, we surge on to exoplanets, black holes, nebulas, and galaxies. The farther we travel, the wilder the questions become as astrophysical theories collide with common sense. What's the shape of the universe? What happens when two black holes merge? Did other worlds spring into being at the Big Bang? And if so, can we tweak the spacetime continuum and visit them? As we travel through the cosmos and beyond, these and equally intriguing propositions are tackled with cutting-edge science—and a delightful dose of wit."
The book is composed of four parts, each with many sections (named in the table of contents below) and numerous sidebars, veering into "Hollywood Science," "Cosmic Conundrum," "Exploration," and "Science History." The division of material into relatively short sections, augmented by the detours just mentioned, make the book a joy to read. In fact, I plan on a second reading of some of the parts I found more-interesting to ensure proper understanding.
Part 1, Leaving Earth: Earth's atmosphere; Beyond the troposphere; The weight of air; Dreams of ascending; Felix Baumgartner and the edge of space; The billionaire "space race"; From aircraft to rockets; Rocket science and Max Q; Launch locations; Newton, an apple, and a cannonball; Rocketeers in peace and war; Attaining Orbit; Space junk and the Kessler effect; Orbits and their decay; The rocket equation; A lesson from meteorites; Onward to deep space.