Response to Imagery on Palin's Site as a Plausible Mechanism for the Death of Rep. Griffords (D-Ariz.)

I've been seeing in the Blogosphere a lot of people yelling about Palin and a recent "cover-up" of imagery on her website that seems to be connected to the death of

I dislike the term cover-up in this regard as it makes it seem like they're hiding something; it strikes me more, in this situation, as a realization by at least SOMEONE on staff that leaving up that material in the wake of the incident seems a bit callous. I left a larger comment on the Slacktivist comment thread on the incident (in context here). If you haven't, also read the information at Talking Points Memo, as the comment requires a bit of knowledge of the description of the killer given in a couple articles. Particularly check the section on the killer's videos, which seem to reveal him as paranoid, possibly schizophrenic.

Here's the comment in its entirety, pasted below.
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I'm honestly not sure what to make of the imagery. I abhor it but I honestly can't see this being politically motivated for the sake of the Republicans -- not least of all because it makes them look really, really bad. I feel like they're in a Catch-22. Had a Republican gotten elected to the district, I still feel like this would have gone down; my ONE possible reason for suspecting otherwise would be that specific individuals (who WERE politically motivated) were trying to manipulate the killer, knowing about his YouTube videos and the like. The videos themselves don't show any particular partisan allegiance, more of a mistrust of politicians in general, making it seem unlikely to me that he'd be that interested in viewing Palin's site or being interested in what she had to say on anything. Griffords was in town, she was newly elected, and this guy was in the right place to do the worst possible thing.

But let's play this out. A heinous and atrocious act has been committed by a crazed individual for whatever reason against the newly-elected Republican senator. Realizing that this sort of imagery and content seems remarkably callous in the wake of this event, it's quickly taken down. I imagine seeing a whole bunch of bloggers and commenters, though maybe in some sense that the imagery is finally gone, still angry and disgusted that Palin and co. have only done so since they'd been put on the defensive -- that is, that they only realize it's wrong because they were the party on the receiving end, and it still makes them look bad. Leaving it up seems even MORE callous to me if only because this sort of outcry started in the first place.

In any case it's a good point that putting up even very vague imagery like that has the potential to bite you in the butt very quickly.

The problem has to run a lot deeper, I say to anyone quick to mark Palin's site as the smoking gun for this. Before today I didn't realize this content was on either of their sites (perhaps due to my contempt for Palin as a public, political figure), but I am aware of the fact that the debate in public channels has gotten very angry and very poorly informed in general. Aside from the fact that -- as mentioned above -- Fox News is so far removed from reality that it's despicable and nauseating, most of the news media seems a bit afraid to report facts as facts, lest they be accused of partisanship. Nobody in the mass media willing to, in an electon where FISCAL REPSONSIBILITY is the rallying cry, actually work out the math for viewers to get some estimation of whether or not a certain policy is effective legislation, smoke in the wind, or even economically harmful. Instead, sound bites, which do little to nothing to inform an average citizen of the nuances regarding what are, to be honest, often difficult and confusing political issues, rule the day. Obstruction is the political order of the day.

Blaming Palin doesn't help much either because it once again replaces what's clearly a festering sore on the way that politics and campaigning is done in this country with a quick soundbite and easy solution that only seems, to my mind, to be the barest tip of the iceberg, and (much like the matter of wishing for the death penalty for the suspected killer) reeks of needing someone quick and easy to nail when the culpability is gargantuan. Compared to a lot of what else is said, to me at least, a few gun sights on a map of the US seems almost laughable to me. Add to the fact that Palin is overall not very popular, especially outside of her party, and it just seems a bit shortsighted to point out THAT as the moment that it went too far. It went too far a long time ago and a whole lot of people just went along for the ride.

I haven't updated in a month?

Well, in lieu of an interesting topic for discussion, have this video that actually will serve as a scathing commentary on the alt-med movement.One of these days I'll type another post. One of these days.

Let's Move the Overton Window Way to the Left -- Part 1

I thought I'd have some fun seeing what the "radical left" are portrayed as doing. Since, as far I'm concerned, this means a groups of (American) liberals who are so far into their own idealistic view that they've lost touch with reality, the sort of legislation and worldview they champion should be comical and obviously nonsensical.

So, what I'm going to do here is compare what political action groups and the like have to say about them, and then refute with a true comical exaggeration of what would more accurately describe the sort of group they think they'd be referring to in a way of re-shaping our current cultural norms. Obviously I can't do this on my own and would LOVE to get support from other blogs in order to shape the way the issues are portrayed.

I got this from the Concerned Women for America website, discussing the matter of repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell:

Serving in the military is a privilege and an honor, not a right. If someone has poor eyesight or cannot pass a physical fitness exam, they are not allowed to serve in the armed forces, no matter how badly that individual might want to be in the military. Strict standards and, quite necessarily, the discrimination against/rejection of those who cannot meet those standards, keep the military strong and ready to protect the country from both domestic and foreign threats.

The battle over whether or not homosexuals should be allowed to serve openly in the military was also fought back in 1993. The law does not allow service members to serve openly, and activists challenged this during the Clinton years in the same way they are challenging the law now. The “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” compromise policy was put into place after numerous congressional hearings were held and it was determined that allowing homosexuals to serve openly would negatively affect military readiness. The law itself never changed. The radical left now wish to repeal the law. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is a way to ensure the military never finds out if a service member or potential service member has chosen to practice homosexuality and thus can avoid having to enforce the law.

Moderate liberals want to repeal the law because they see no reason why gay soldiers need to hide who they are and don't see how being interested in people of the same sex has any relation to competency as a soldier. Repealing DADT and allowing gays to openly serve removes stress for these soldiers serving, especially considering "don't ask" isn't always respected. Rather than worry about others in the organization looking through their personal belongings or correspondence in order to find evidence sufficient for rejection, they actually want military service to be based around merit.

The radical left wants to repeal the law so that they can make an army consisting solely of gay men and women whose first target will be the homophobes interested in treating them as second-class citizens or even advocating violence (such as corrective rape) against them.

The radical left takes the stance that, hell, we don't need a military at all! Everyone can live in peace and we can all share precious resources like oil together, which we all drink out of from a single communal cup. Yeah, since nobody drives around any more there's no need for oil except as a source of calories, and it turns out it apparently tastes pretty good -- at least some of the byproducts; one of the original developers of Vaseline (petroleum jelly) had a spoonful of it every day in order to stay healthy!

The radical left takes the stance that, hell, we should let other countries invade us to level the playing field! Why should get about 5 times the share of the worlds nonrenewable fuel supply as it relates to our population (5% of the world's population but 25% of the world's nonrenewable resources)? Let's give it to the rest of the world so that they can share in our economic benefits, thereby improving the worlds' economies and raising the standard of living across the board.

The radical left takes the position that while they're at it they may as well take our population! Why not start with our most productive workers? That way there won't be as large an amount of per-capita unemployment and we won't have to worry about immigrant workers being out-competed for low-wage jobs because there won't be anyone to compete with! Besides, that way the population of the world could spread out a little bit better and New York traffic won't continue to be bumper-to-bumper!

Do these positions sound crazy to you? Good! They ought to! Now, don't the claims of what the left wants to do that groups like CWA are making sound sane and worth supporting? I think they do!

Division by Zero (OR: Why don't I install a LaTeX plugin already)

Ever wonder why division by zero causes your computers and calculators to vomit up all sorts of ridiculous error messages? Curious about why this "undefined" result was never defined?

Know the answer and are only reading this out of some sort of strange social obligation like what surely at least 85% of my audience probably is?

Well, then, read on, because I'm going to discuss the operation right now!

To understand why division by zero really screws things up, we're going to have to take a quick review of some of the lessons you might have gone over in some of your algebra classes.

First of all, what's division? Division is a basic mathematical operation. Its primary purpose to find a number that represents the number of items that are put into each of a certain number of groups out of a larger "pool". For example, if we have 8 bags of candy and four people to give them out to, we end up with 2 bags of candy per person; 8 divided by 4 is 2. (Sometimes we like to shorten this, and just write it as "8/4=2" for simplicity.) Because of the way division families work, we can also figure out how many people we can give out 2 bags of candy to if we have 8 bags -- this is 8 divided by 2, or 4.

This is due to the commutative property of multiplication, actually. It turns out that the process of division is the inverse operation of multiplication -- which we use to find, given a certain number of groups of something, how much of that thing we have. For example, if I have 3 goldfish each in 5 different fish tanks, I have 15 goldfish because 3 times 5 is 15 (3*5=15). When we say that multiplication is "commutative" (or that the operation "commutes") it means that the two numbers on the left hand side of our mathematical statement can be interchanged to give us the same result -- 3*5=15 and 5*3=15.

You might note that commutativity applies not only to multiplication but also to addition. This might not surprise you if you've realized that multiplication itself is really just adding in groups. So we can represent 3*5 as 3+3+3+3+3. Heck, we could also represent it as 5+5+5. This is a very useful matter to keep in mind, as it makes it easy to clean up messy algebra that we might end up working with in a more complicated setting. The realization of the commutativity is pretty clear when switching, say, the first and second 5s in that last expression gives you the same result that you started with.

Thus, if division tells us the total number of y objects in z groups is x, then multiplication tells us that having x objects each in groups of y gives us z objects. In a symbolic representation, we'll describe this as such: x*y=z can be reversed as z/y=x. Note that since we can switch x and y, then the other two symbolic statements in this "factor family" are y*x=z and z/x=y.

So, what does this have to do with why division by 0 causes errors?

Well, let's have n represent this otherwise undefined result from a division by zero operation. Just to make it easier to follow we'll choose a specific number to divide by zero -- I like 7. Thus we're assuming that 7/0=n.

If we go back to our knowledge that division and multiplication are inverses, we find that the above statement implies that n*0=7. That means that we're adding a number no times (i.e, we're not adding anything at all!) and somehow ending up with 7. Or that I've added nothing n times and ended up with 7. Going back to our conceptual representations, that's like me going with my 1 gallon bucket to the well, coming back with it empty, and somehow having brought 7 gallons of water to my village.

That's why we won't try to shoehorn a definition for division by zero! It doesn't make physical sense! If we allow for it in our modeling of physics we can allow for division by zero, then we're allowing for things like the spontaneous creation of matter and instantaneous teleportation! Considering we don't really see this happening (definitely not on a macroscopic scale, anyway), it seems that treating the result of division by zero as "any old number" is conceptually worthless to us.

If we try to do algebra with it, our equations will also, in a manner of speaking, blow up in our faces -- more precisely we'll lose some information in possible values that our expressions can take. If we divide by x in solving an algebraic statement, we're implicitly assuming that x can't be zero. If x can be zero, doing this is going to cause us to end up missing that solution and possibly others. Consider (x-5)*x = 0. If we divide by x then x has to equal 5. But x could be zero, so we miss out on that solution.

But I know what someone out there is saying -- what if instead of 7, we use zero? Well, that's a good point -- and it IS a distinct concept. Then we have 0/0=n. If we go and rewrite this, then we have n*0=0. This is valid -- in fact, you'll note that n can be anything, and this will still be valid.

That's actually the problem. We can plug in anything for n and it'll work. Thus 0/0 doesn't give us a single number; it effectively gives us every number. This is bad for algebra. We don't call this "undefined"; since we can define 0/0 to be anything we call it an indeterminate form. (Basically, so-called because we can't determine a single number that 0/0 represents.)

What this means is that from 0/0 you can pretty much get anything. If you're doing some mathematical test and you find a 0/0 as a result, that means that you can't conclude anything about the expression which you're testing, and will need to use another test.

So don't treat x/0 as a normal number!

Generating perfect squares without memorization

Hey, ever had to memorize the perfect squares for a school assignment, to be able to list them all, say, up to like 20 or so, such that you can give them without using a calculator?

I did once, in 8th grade algebra!

Well, I was at least expected to memorize them. But I didn't. Because I didn't need to! I had a generating function for the perfect squares, and for relatively small numbers I could list them without a calculator!

Since the assignment -- a pop quiz -- was just to list the squares of the first 20 counting numbers (so 1^2, 2^2, 3^2, etc.), basically in order, all I needed to do was find some sort of relationship between one square and the next. It's pretty clear that, y'know, the difference between the first two squares (1 and 4) is 3, then the second (4 and 9) is 5, etc. In fact, the difference between any two consecutive perfect squares is consecutive odd numbers!

Now, I bet one or two of you seriously don't believe me on that one. But I'll show you it's for real. Of course, you could just look up a multiplication table, but it'll be a bit more enlightening to do something more like induction to demonstrate.

For a given counting number n, the formula for that value's square is, of course, just n^2.

For the consecutive perfect square, (n+1)^2, that's just (n+1)(n+1).

If we expand that out we have n^2+2n+1, which you might remember as a formula from your high school algebra courses.

Although I don't think memorization is the path to mathematic success, the formula (x+y)^2=x^2+2xy+y^2 comes up often enough that's it's worth recalling. Still, it's not something too hard to figure out either way, if you know what you're doing.

Thus we actually can express the next perfect square in terms of the previous square; note the "n^2" term in it. So we're taking the previous square and adding other terms to it.

What are those other terms? 2n+1, in fact. 2n is an even number, fairly clearly, due to that factor of two you see right there. Adding 1 to it makes it an odd number. Increasing n by one causes 2n+1 to increase by two. Hence, you'll add a consecutively higher odd number to the previous perfect square in order to get the next one; if you list them all starting at 1^2=1, you can get pretty far.

In fact, 0^2=0 and then 1^2=0+2(0)+1=1, so we've demonstrated the initial case. We've also shown it holds for (n+1) too, so let's just try this for (n) then, just to demonstrate that what he have here holds true for all the natural numbers!

n^2=(n-1)^2+2(n-1)+1=2n^2-2n+1+2n-2+1=2n^2 -- hey, we get the initial expression back! It definitely works -- not that this is surprising, since we did in some sense derive it back in high school.

That's basically mathematical induction in a nutshell. Take an expression for (n), demonstrate it works for the initial case (which is generally 1 or 0), and then demonstrate it for (n+1) -- which means it holds for every natural number after the initial case! We've done a few other steps along the way to try to make it a little clearer that the formula works like that, but that's the basic setup.

Lest you stand in awe at undeserved mathematical prowess, at the time I found the pattern, I wasn't interested in formalizing my formula. I just understood that it worked, at least for the numbers I was working with. So don't feel too bad if this is a little bit confusing, especially since I don't have the luxury of LaTeX.

But yeah, you start with 1, add 3 and get 4, add 5 and get 9, add 7 and get 16, add 9 and get 25, add 11 and get 36, add 13 and 49, add 15 and get 64, add 17 and get 81, add 19 and get 100, add 21 and get 121, etc. etc.

This was going to be a blog post on the alcohols I've had recently, but I've still got a few different beer bottles hanging out in the minifridge (and indeed, a couple of them are pretty good), but I didn't want to post it until I'd had all of them, and I didn't want to drink them all at once.

And another thing!

I was going to maybe blog about the couple of episodes of Project Runway that I've watched, and what I think about the show from what I've gleaned from watching that much of it, but I think the last entry I made says just about all I need to say on the nature of the show.

Well, that and they seem to tend to pick the right 2-3 worst designers, but they always send the wrong one home.

A Rant About Visual Design

Between the two of us, my girlfriend is the one who does the visual design. I'm not much of a visual artist (as one can tell from the couple of times I've posted my own images), which may be the reason that I prefer my visual information to be generally simple and clear.

While browsing through the archives of The Daily WTF, I found a link to a gallery that's clearly tailored for StumbleUpon. It shows a series of "creative resumes" for people in the graphic design field. It's a rather old link -- from 2009 -- but it's new to me, so I figured I'd comment on it

I was surprised that as many people had been defending the designs in the comments as I found. Although they capture visual interest quickly, they almost all feel completely over-designed. The information in them is nearly impossible to glean, and most aren't particularly friendly to black-and-white laserjet printers.

The effect is similar to a person standing on the street with a bullhorn yelling to try to get people to pay attention. Sure, it's loud enough to get attention, but hell if I can ever tell what people using them are saying. It always sounds like a garbled mess.

I would actively reject any such resume if it was put in front of me, if I were in charge of hiring at a decently-sized graphic design firm. That is, I would be turned off by these designs more than a completely plain resume made in 30 minutes in Word. There are a few reasons for this!

1. It demonstrates that the person making it doesn't understand what the purpose of the resume is for -- to convey specific (written) information about the individual's education and experience. Design that actually obscures the text is counter-productive to that end.
2. It suggests that the designer's ego cannot be kept in check. "Pffft, I'm not going to tone down my work for the plebes in suits who will be looking over it. If they can't appreciate my genius then maybe they don't deserve it!" Then again, maybe everyone wins if the applicant holds that attitude. Unless, you know, he or she is in need of a job.
3. The designer probably has a portfolio that can be used to demonstrate situations where more intricate visual designs were appropriately used. The resume does not need to need to speak for itself.
4. Similar to the first point, what if the applicant, once hired, comes across a design job that requires a relatively minimalistic approach? Can he or she be trusted to do that if the resume implies a lack of restraint?

To put it more succinctly, it's the equivalent of going to a job interview wearing a shirt like this. (I took the courtesy of not embedding it because some people might be concerned about the foul language displayed prominently on it, even if I have no fucking clue how the people who'd give a shit could have found this damn blog.)

Okay, I admit, that was a bit forced and cliche.

In any case, if I had to go through a couple hundred resumes, I would most certainly not try to spend more than a few minutes going through each one. If I had to, in order to get any information out of it, it would go in the pile.

I would not hire most of these applicants to design a website for me, since these resumes suggest that usability principles would go out the window FAST; the site would be cluttered and probably inefficient. ("What do you mean people still use dial-up?")

I might accept this sort of work for a print ad for a growing organization, though, where the main goals are to get visual interest and some level of name recognition. But that's far out of my realm of expertise anyway so I don't feel comfortable making a sweeping statement regarding that.

One comment on that page linked to another one with more modest resume ideas. These are all excellent! They are visually interesting, accessible, and printer-friendly, while also being uncluttered. The focus of the design goes more in choosing the typography and developing a focused layout. I would sooner go with a resume that looked like one of these but only had "lorem ipsum" text over it than the first set of resumes I saw.

I suppose ultimately it's a question of sizzle over steak. Or spending an extra 10 seconds looking at something that takes a full minute more to comprehend.

If there's any good news, it's that most of the entries in the first link seem to be done as non-serious assignments for classes rather than used to seek out actual work. *Phew*