I am … unhindered by talent

One of my constant struggles as an educator in computer science has been helping students see a bigger picture, look past the mundanities of yesterday’s “help wanted” page, and see what the world could be rather than what it has been.

One way this has often played out has been in debates over programming languages and development tools. Students are (quite legitimately) concerned with their near term employment prospects, and so they tend to focus what they’ve heard of, and what they see in the job web sites. Unfortunately that is almost always an exercise in looking backwards in time. When I started in 1991, the problem was getting students out of Pascal and C and start thinking about objects. Now we’re working to add things like Ruby and Python to our Java-heavy toolkit. Constant throughout has been the difficult task of getting them to take (semi-) functional languages (Scheme, Haskell) seriously or, in fact, any language doesn’t have a “For dummies” book at their local mega-bookshop.

I need to be fair, though, and make it clear that we’ve always had students who could see the bigger picture, and have often pushed us faculty to open some important new doors. I suspect that we’ve actually been luckier in that respect at UMM than many other programs. That said, you still get groaners (often very vocal) who never seem to be happy unless you’re emphasizing whatever tool or language they’re firmly convinced is their only road to employment.

This is one of the reasons that it makes me so happy to see the list of programming languages used in the One Laptop Per Child project:

We will support five programming environments on the laptop: (1) Python, from which we have built our user interface and our activity model; (2) Javascript for browser-based scripting; (3) Csound, a programmable music and audio environment; (4) Squeak, a version of Smalltalk embedded into a media-rich authoring environment; and (5) Logo. We will also provide some support for Java and Flash.

OK, we can debate the details (and I’m sure people have and will), but let’s skip all that shall we? Let’s instead note that none of these was a “heavy hitter” 5 or 10 years ago, and there are plenty of people who would (wrongly in my opinion) argue that none are terribly important today. How many data structures classes in the U.S., for example, (a key “bread and butter” course in most computing curriculums) use any of these languages? I’m sure there are a few (especially Python), but proportionally I bet it’s pretty tiny. (Try searching either Amazon or the web for textbooks for such a course, for example.)

It’s also worth considering impact here. Sure, I doubt that anyone’s likely to start building inventory control systems in Logo, but should that be the issue? What’s the real opportunity for impact here? How do I change the world? By building accounting systems? Or by contributing to a project that plans to put computers and software in the hands to millions of kids all around the world?

You want to make the world a better place? You want to really fight terrorism? Then give people hope, a chance to grow and make their world better. Give them something to protect. Contribute to a project like this.

And, if you’re contributing to this project, you apparently program in Python, JavaScript, CSound, Squeak and Logo.

So let’s put an end to the whining about these not being “real” programming languages and nobody building “real” programs with them. I’ve written a crapload of Java code in my day that only a handful of people will ever use. Some bright bulbs used Squeak to build Scratch, which I suspect will be used by millions. Hmmm … which do I find more impressive?

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These (American) ladies recently won an international bridge competition in Shanghai, and displayed their little sign when receiving their prize. The sign was prompted by questions from players from other countries:

“What we were trying to say, not to Americans but to our friends from other countries, was that we understand that they are questioning and critical of what our country is doing these days, and we want you to know that we, too, are critical,” Ms. Greenberg said, stressing that she was speaking for herself and not her six teammates.

Anyone who’s traveled much (or simply interacted much with folks from other parts of the world) in recent years, will recognize the situation. Many U.S. government policies including, but not limited to the Iraq fiasco, are broadly condemned worldwide. In my experience, however, most folks are clever enough to distinguish between the government and its people (something many Americans appear to struggle with), so one of the first things they often ask about is where you stand on the war. The faculty and graduate students at the University ask me. Sub-Evil’s schoolmates ask him. I’m hardly surprised that it came up around the coffee pots and meal tables at an international bridge tournament.

Apparently, however, there are those who believe that it’s unacceptable for these people to publicly separate themselves from the current administration. The women didn’t make any sort of policy statement and criticize any particular actions. All they did is self-identify as being in the near (or actual - depends on the election) majority of voters that didn’t tick the Shurb box on the day. Yet the United States Bridge Federation has chosen to void their bowels and enter the full court press on these players:

[The sanction] calls for a one-year suspension from federation events, including the World Bridge Olympiad next year in Beijing; a one-year probation after that suspension; 200 hours of community service “that furthers the interests of organized bridge”; and an apology drafted by the federation’s lawyer.

It would also require them to write a statement telling “who broached the idea of displaying the sign, when the idea was adopted, etc.”

Alan Falk, a lawyer for the federation, wrote the four team members on Nov. 6, “I am instructed to press for greater sanction against anyone who rejects this compromise offer.”

Hey, we even have some classic “We’ll reward you for folding early and turning against your friends”. Charming, really. Participating in the international circuit is a key component of the income for some of these ladies, so this is serious business, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s hard for them to stand up to this level of pressure. I hope they can get some really good lawyers and smack the crap out of these small-minded dweebs. I’d not be surprised (or blame them), however, if they try to find a quick way out of this with minimal damage.

Thanks to 21st Century Citizen for the pointer. They source to the NYTimes, which is where they (and I) got the photo.

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Great - it looks like the networks are parceling out speaking time in the debates according to candidate’s poll standings, adding yet another layer of “The rich get richer” to American politics. I’m going to go to bed and cry and leave you to learn more on your own:

• Political text analysis: The Times counts debate words
• Democratic Debate: Analyzing the Details
• The cynical take on the debate speaking times
• Debate Time Follow-up: The CNN debate

The “Greatest Democracy On Earth” (or whatever we call ourselves these days) needs to have elections based on good information and honest debate and discussion. That doesn’t happen if we only pretend to give voice to all the candidates.

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I doubt this will be news to many, but it’s a really cool idea and worth the plug. The One Laptop Per Child program is making that crucial leap from great concept to spiffy, shipping technology. These are designed to be used by groups of kids in the developing world, but the project’s viziers had the clever idea of allowing folks in the U.S. and Canada to buy one of these first units under their Give One Get One program. You pay $400, and $200 goes to sending you a wondrous new XO laptop, while the other $200 is a tax deductible donation that puts one of these gems in the hand of a child in the developing world. This is only for a limited time, however: November 12 and November 26

As Michael Tiemann points out, however, if you’re gonna get one, you really should consider getting two. These things are designed to form little ad hoc wireless networks whenever they’re near other XO laptops, and lots of the software assumes the existence of other XO laptops more than it assumes access to the full force of the internet (which so much traditional software now assumes). So you, your kids, and whoever you’re showing off your new toy to will be much more impressed if you have two of them to play with.

I’ve had some people ask if we were planning to buy one. Unfortunately (a) we can’t buy one from the UK in a straight-forward way and (b) we’re pretty tight for cash with partial salary and the damn exchange rate. So the answer is no, for now, but not for lack of wanting to. My guess, however, is that this short window of opportunity is a nice marketing scheme to bring in some cash fast, and that down the road they’ll open things up more broadly on a similar scheme. And why not? It raises their profile, and the “Give one, get one” scheme puts more in the hands of the target group of kids.

Cleverly, KK has proposed that UMM’s CSci discipline buy four of them for students and faculty to do projects on. I think that’s a great idea for a lot of reasons, only one of which is that there will be some waiting for me to play with when we get home :-).

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I just discovered The Gapminder, a very cool visualization tool created by Hans Rosling and others. It gives you the ability to visualize changes in a variety of socio-economic indicators across both space and time, with particularly effective use of simple animations across the time dimension.

It’s really cool to play with, and there are a lot of things you can change that aren’t immediately obvious (I found the short demo in the on-line help quite helpful). You can certainly learn a lot by goofing around with it (as well as generate a lot of meaningless visual noise). The screenshot above is from a plot of life expectancy vs. per capita income over time (the default plot you get when you start it up). I had to watch it a few times to sift out some trends, but after getting past the obvious “generally, more money means longer life” I realized that lots of blue bubbles (i.e., African countries) were “falling” out of the cloud at the end like particulates settling out of a liquid. This indicates that their life expectancy has plummeted in the last few years, which is obviously not the right direction. Why? Almost certainly the continuing AIDS crisis in large parts of Africa, and visualizations like this make it painfully (literally) obvious that this must be cause for serious concern.

In the graph above, I’ve highlighted Botswana,which shows a particularly depressing case. Both their life expectancy and per capita incomes were moving in a happy direction until the early 90’s when, despite continued gains in per capita income (which I’d like to know more about), their life expectancy flew the wrong direction.

Take a second to think about the enormous human suffering a change like that implies.

Thanks to John Hawks for the pointer. Hawks points out that the use of circles of different areas probably isn’t a great way to visualize quantitative differences (a general point Tufte raised years ago), but Rosling’s going for quick impact rather than quantitative precision:

So far, we have had a major hit with two target groups: children under 12 and heads of state. What they have in common is that you have only 5 to 10 seconds to impress them.

(You just have to love the reality that you need the same tools to communicate with little kids and world leaders. Maybe we should just put the little kids in charge? They might have more empathy.)

One thing that really annoyed me when I wrote this post was the fact that you can’t easily embed these graphs in a web page. I don’t think I’d really appreciated how used I’d grown to being able to embed images, video, maps, slideshows, and the like in blog posts. I think embedding has become absolutely key to the success and mass propagation on the web, and people designing new tools (or updating existing ones) better keep that in mind.

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Posted on Flickr by Pierre J.:

These are four scanned pictures of hardcopies I possess of the French nuclear test codenamed Licorne, which was fired on August 24, 1970 . The French army had those pictures taken on site.

Those pictures were readily available at the time at Tahiti and Moruroa military base, and mine have been quite degraded. I scanned them and tried to restore them.

Thanks to Your Daily Awesome for the pointer.

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OpenCongress has a nice piece on what a sham Our Fearless Leader’s blather about “fiscal responsibility” is. I’ll send you there for the text, but the short version is (not surprisingly) this isn’t about responsibility at all, it’s about priorities and (lack of vision) in the White House. He’s happy to spend inordinate amounts of money on his toys, friends, and pet projects, but feign responsibility by whining about what are effectively tiny amounts in the entire budget, but which could make a real difference in people’s lives.

To provide some perspective, we’re spending hundreds of billions on this poorly conceived, poorly planned, dishonest and corrupt mess in Iraq, killing huge numbers of Iraqi people and American soldiers in the bargain. The entire annual budget of UMM is well under $100M, a factor of something like 1/1000. It’s thus absolutely obvious that we could ensure that everyone in the U.S. who wanted to go to college could do so for free, entirely on the Fed’s dime. It is not about resources, it is about choices.

Another take on this is illustrated by the amazing (but very large) graph from SolarPowerRocks.com below the fold, which makes it painfully clear how little the administration really cares about energy independence and planning for the future of our country and our planet.

Selfish, foolish bastards, frankly. Selfish, foolish bastards.

Read the rest of this entry »

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I was bummed that, being abroad, we’d missed Nova’s Judgement day.

But w00t!

It’ll be available on-line starting 16 Nov.

Looking forward to it :-).

(I feel like I should have converted this post to haiku or limerick form. Not today, however.)

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I was pottering in the kitchen (probably making tea or some such) while WeatherGirl was listening to a comedy program on the radio in the sitting room. I’m half hearing the words as they gently waft my direction, when a woman on the program says “shit” quite clearly and plainly. Matter of fact, no big deal, middle of the sentence.

“Shit”

But it popped out at me like a glowing ember and smacked that neural structure from 1974 that said “Hey - people aren’t supposed to say things like that on radio!” Which was a little odd, since I’m typically not very good at noticing such things (which is sometimes a problem when reviewing CDs for the radio station). Yet there it was, and it certainly caught my attention this time.

I suspect that in 1974 the BBC never would have never aired such language, except perhaps in the wee hours, or with bleeping. Times change, however, as the recent UK re-rating of Christopher Lee’s 1958 Dracula from X to 12A (!) makes clear.

In a larger sense, however, it seems like we’ve turned a huge collective corner and, short of some catastrophic change, aren’t likely to come back. It’s clear that people swear, are quite fascinated by sex, and enjoy the occasional fart joke. Various folks like the Victorians and the FCC might have attempted to deny these basic facts, but it didn’t make them any less true, it just drove them underground.

The web, however, is rapidly washing away any such pretense. Without any sort of centralized control over content (and none on the horizon), we end up with the great unwashed, and almost entirely unedited, rambling burps of the world. And we can no longer pretend that it’s not out there, that people don’t say these things. All these past forms of mass censorship have been based on the flimsy notion that we were protecting someone from something. Now, short of an off-grid survivalist camp in Montana (where I’m sure no one swears, talks about sex, or tells fart jokes), you just can’t pretend it’s not out there. Mulder would be proud.

As a result, we’ll just have to grow up and take some responsibility, for ourselves and our children, and not assume that someone else will handle it for us. We’ll no doubt run across some things that aren’t to our liking (American Idol anyone?). Assuming they’re not illegal or harming others, we’ll need to just look away and hit the back button. Kids are gonna run into things that lead to awkward questions. But heaven knows they talked some crazy shit in the playground when I was in elementary school, so I suspect all that’s really changed is our ability to pretend it wasn’t happening.

This is one of those moments where something huge has changed, incrementally but fairly quickly, and will not likely change back in many-a-lifetime. And that little “shit” was just one of the hinge creaks as the door opened on this new world.

Credit to Neil101 for the great image.

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As has been noted elsewhere by many (e.g., PeeZed), tomorrow night (Tuesday, 13 Nov) PBS is airing Judgement Day. This is a Nova program covering in considerable detail the ins and outs of the trial two years ago in Dover, Pennsylvania, that was, at its heart, about whether “intelligent design” had any pretense to being science. It obviously doesn’t, and the court had the wherewithal to agree.

This has been heralded by many as a landmark case in the fight between science and reason on the one hand and politics, mumbo jumbo, and bizarrely wishful thinking on the other. While I fervently hope that this ruling is in fact a harbinger of a more rational future in the U.S., only time will truly tell. The case is clearly an crucial one, however, both for what it tells us about the powerful, organized, and persistent forces of willful ignorance, and about the ability of the forces of reason and sense to carry the day with clarity and force of their own.

Being out of the country, we will obviously miss the show, although we might get to catch it here later if one of the UK broadcasters picks it up. The most recent Science Talk podcast includes an interview with the show’s writer and producer, Joseph McMaster. Steve Mirsky (Science Talk’s excellent host) obviously really likes the show (he saw an advance tape), which makes me all the more sad that we’ll miss out. Mirsky ends the segment by mentioning that the pro-ID Discovery Institute has preemptively denounced the program, fussing that Nova fails to be impartial and should be more up-front about their clear bias. As Mirsky points out (with a wee twinkle in his voice), Nova could hardly be clearer about their bias: They’re a science program, and ID ain’t science.

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