Reason To Fear

Here's a very good reason why people who ascribe to leftward leaning views should fear the nationalization of healthcare:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704402404574525962492620186.html

To whit: a Democratic congressman got an amendment in the recently passed bill that bans federal funding for abortion. Private insurance is still allowed (currently) to pay for it, but the government will not.

Tell me: once the private insurance industry is destroyed, as it surely must be by this legislation, what will be the fate of womens' rights to their own bodies? Abortion might still be legal, but there might not be doctors around who can afford to practice it. Will abortions stop? Unlikely. They will just get more dangerous and gruesome.

Added:
The bill allows "private insurers to offer abortion coverage so long as tax dollars are not involved." Well now, that's a significant caveat, especially since the other big part of this health care plan is subsidizing insurance for the poor. Therefore, if you're poor and part of the cost of your insurance is paid for by the government, you can't get an abortion. Sure you can pay for it yourself, but again, you're poor. And what were you paying for insurance for in the first place?

Twisted and Orwelian, is it not? And consider that its likely that poor folk are likely to be in proportionally greater need for such services; given demographic patterns.

The Facts of Life via Chess

"Lets play with reproductive organs!"


"I meant lets Play Chess, you deviant. "

The egg, sperm, and Uterus seem sufficiently subtle as to not be lewd. But its hard, ahem, difficult to make an erect penis with subtly. But really, what else could the bishop be?

I like the sperm and egg on pedestals, but I'm not sure I'm completely satisfied with the penis and uterus. Maybe I'll try making smaller versions and putting them on pedestals themselves.

The collapse of insurance

Some key points of the healthcare legislation passed by the house:

All citizens are required to have insurance, and pay a tax penalty if they don't.
The tax penalty is significantly less than the cost of insurance.
Pre-existing condition disqualification is prohibited.

Put those three things together, what do you get? No reason to pay for insurance until you get sick!

What does that mean? In order to pay for claims, insurers will have to collect more money from their policyholders (eg: raise rates). This will further discourage people from buying it until they get sick. Ultimately, only sick people with claims greater than their contributions will bother getting insurance, and the system will collapse. At that point, there will be no other option but the "public option". I wonder if this is the intention of the writers of the bill? Are they that sneaky, or just that ignorant? It certainly does accomplish the goal of making healthcare a government institution.

The purpose of insurance is to spread risk. We protect ourselves against the unknown by banding together and agreeing to help people when tragedy strikes. Insurance isn't often discussed in those glowing terms (I suspect that's because people hate the paperwork), but abstractly that's exactly what's happening. The system works as well as it does because people can't systematically game the system. If they want the benefit of the community's support when tragedy strikes them, they must be willing to help others in their time of need. That, friends, is the purpose of preexisting condition exclusions.

So what's wrong with just letting the government pay for everyone's medical bills with tax money? Well, lots. Government is not an institution that lends itself to efficiency or high standards. If government fails, it doesn't collapse and get replaced, it just continues failing. Most importantly: it restricts its citizen's liberty by restricting the ways in which they are legally permitted to associate with each other.

I've heard arguments tossed around about the unethical nature of denying people care based on preexisting conditions (which I believe the previous^2 paragraph debunks), but this curtailment of liberty is a much more serious moral failure.

Tradgedy

The health care bill has passed in the house. Goddamnit

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704402404574523613159447566.html

Maybe we can hope for a presidential veto? Haha, I kid.

Another Figurine

I had started on a male torso last night also. I finished it today, behold:

I left in the oven too long and got a burned stripe on the front. The color was quite nice, and I realized that cooking it longer would be an effective way to give it dark black skin. So: I turned up the heat and cooked each side. I love the result, and its a nice contrast to the pale-skinned female. I don't know that any particular ethnicity has that mix of maroon and dark black in their melatonin, but it looks good and matches the wood on my board.

With these black and white miniatures made, it seemed obvious to put them on the chessboard. They are just the right size, and they make a perfect king and queen. I think I might make a complete set in the same spirit. I'll just need to figure out what makes good analogs to the other pieces while keeping them distinct enough.

Added:
Here's an idea: go with the reproductive motif that the nudes hint at. Might be a little lewd by conventional standards, but hey, why not? Pieces might be designed as follows:

Bishop: Phallus
Knight: Uterus
Rook: Egg
Pawn: Sperm

Photo post

I made a little statuette outta scuply last night. It started out as a full figurine, but I was having trouble with the proportions so I decided to focus on the torso. I'm quite pleased with the way it turned out, the baked scuply has very nice fleshy tones, and I think I captured the female curvature realistically and beautifully.
The nipples got reddened from cooking in the oven. It was accidental, but I like the effect.



I found this mysterious filing cabinet in one of the conference rooms at the college of business while I was setting something up. At first I thought the were library reference card catalogs, but look at the marker drawn on the top. Its the Dow Portfolio! In Punchcard form!



If you look closely, the date is from the fifties. The image of Ohio in the middle is interesting. I thought this was a pretty awesome historical relic. I'm glad I got a picture of it, cause the cabinet is gone now. I find it somewhat incredible that these things worked as computer memory at all. But then, I can look at it and roughly imagine how it works. Compare that to modern memory: you can't even see the components that store information with the naked eye, much less begin to figure out how they work.

Seems almost a shame to thow such things away, but thats just nostolgia. Its definately a shame to throw these things away:
When we redo labs at CoB we strip all the components out of the old computers, just in case we need to use them in other machines. The consequence is we have a filing cabinet drawer full of ram, hard-drives, disk drives, and other such things that quickly grow obsolete. Whats the ram in the picture above worth? Five years ago, about $2000. Ten years ago, probably $10,000, if it could be purchased at any price. Now you couldn't give it away. They're all 256mb or smaller, and most are for dimm-slot types that aren't used anymore. It would be much more useful to leave them in the original machines and donate them to charity.

This is the official diagnosis for the previous photo, in pictogram form.


Here's Halloween pictures of me, Rick, and Matt.
Guess who I am. "A cowboy" is incorrect, there's an actual person I'm going for. He's a musician. It would probably be helpful if you could see the eyeliner in the picture.

Rick is also a musician. Just not one that's ever existed (until now). What he's wearing are actually my clothes, plus the bottom peice of the copper chainmail bikini I made as a tie. I think he should play on stage like that.

If you don't recognize which musician Matt is, you might be a square.

We were experimenting with using my roadside-found high-hat in some of our songs. Lacking a microphone stand, I rigged up my desk lamp to serve the purpose.


Finally, this is Rick playing with Acarya at Madison theater for the world music fest. He's wearing my NevERdiE ambigram shirt in red and black.

Added: Immediately after I posted this, I got an anonymous comment that was a spam add for male enhancement. Apparently the bot's have defeated Google's Catchpa's. I wonder if it the subject matter could posibly have had any relationship to the nude figure?

Google Books

I should be able to read the full text of books I already own in hard-copy on Google Books. Barring that, I should at least be able to search the full text and have the page number where my search string appears displayed. Currently searches only return three random occurrences of the search string.

Open Letter to Congressional Representatives

Senator,

As your constituent, I request that you please oppose all legislation that increases governmental control over private decisions and markets. I believe that government's role is to protect citizens against force and fraud, and the actions of government should be explicitly confined to those fields.

While the health-care issue is certainly a prominent example of legislation I would wish for you oppose, I'm quite sure there are many other such issues that I am unaware of. It is my hope that I can continue to be blissfully unaware of such issues, as my representatives will do their duty in protecting me from them.

Please make Liberty your primary value in all decisions.
TJ Murphy

Tattoos

I've been thinking about tattoos again. I decided when I was drawing ambigrams that I would wait at least a year after doing a design before I actually got it tattooed, just to give myself some modicum of assurance that its as timeless and eternal as I think it should be.

Its been more than a year since I did the MEME-GENE/BODY-SOUL sculpture design. I'm thinking I'd like to get one ambigram tattooed on each arm, along the diagonal curve where the tricep meets the shoulder muscle.

Screenshots from the sculpture are below, one from the front-side, one from the back. They're distorted slightly because of the irregular angles of the metal. Note that the tattoo would be the cut-out parts of the panels, not the gray parts; and the letters would be done (probably) in black. Interesting to note that since they are front-back ambigrams, the alternate meanings will only be readable in a mirror. I like that twist; if BODY and GENE are the normal images, SOUL and MEME would be the mirror reflections. You could interpret this to mean that the body and gene are the surface, tangible objects, and that the soul and meme are their hidden, abstract counterparts.



What do you think? Especially, you, family. I know you dislike tattoos, but this one I think is justified. Its a representation the ideas to which I'm devoting my life's work.

An interesting (though unintended) aesthetic point: the MEME-GENE ambigram looks a bit like Hebrew letters, mixed with a futuristic roman font (ala Star Trek). Conversely, the BODY-SOUL ambigram looks more like classical script, mixed with Asian brush strokes. Some symbolism might be read into those coincidences, but it was unintended. Maybe its more interesting if it was unintended; the two styles may say something about my subconscious influences.

Alcohol

So I've decided to stop drinking alcohol. I read Feynman's biography this week, and he mentions that he made that decision at some point in his life. His rationale was that the thing he most enjoyed in life was thinking and the products thereof, and alcohol certainly doesn't help in that regard.

He's a character I'd like to emulate in many ways, and I agree with his assessment. I've not had any really major negative consequences from being drunk, but there are certainly plenty of evenings (and the resulting mornings) that I could have used more effectively to further my ambitions. So I think I can forgo the sauce. Drunkenness isn't all that entertaining anyway.

The importance of failure

In contemplating the connections between computation in neural networks and in economic networks, the question of failure arises.

"Market efficiency" does not mean that prices are always correct, or that every agent is always acting with perfect rationality. It does mean that all information available to the system is incorporated into prices, through the action of agents behaving rationally with their given small piece of information about the environment.

It may not always be clear whether an agent is acting rationally. Their information may come from unreliable sources, while their processing is rational, and this will result in failure. Likewise, they may have good information and bad processing, which will also result in failure. Therefore, failure should propagate backwards through a network until it reaches an agent in the latter condition.

Ideally, this agent would be corrected or removed, and all the other agents that follow it should be able to resume functioning with minimal penalty (unless part of their decision making involves where they get their information from; in which case they should be penalized for choosing a poor source of information). If the failure propagates back to an entity that is not allowed to fail, what happens? The information that the failure would contributes to the economy is lost.

The point is: failure is an important tool for developing economic efficiency. I mention this, of course, because of the current discussion over economic agents that are "too big to fail," and the idea of creating agents that cannot legally be allowed to fail (like social security and the impending health care program). Because they cannot be allowed to fail, they can't experiment with novel ways of incorporating information, which means they cannot develop and contribute to economic efficiency. And since the world is dynamic, their world-model and processing is likely to be wrong eventually (no matter how conservative it is), and so we get stuck with inefficient, broken economic agents that we can't get rid of.

And back to the original point: how do natural neural networks deal with failing elements?

Birthday

Its my birthday today. I celebrated with a linear algebra exam, calculus, and probability. Its a good thing I've got smart group-mates for that latter class; they're much smarter than me and I'd be lost otherwise. All the calls from family and friends wishing me a happy birthday helped make it a happy occasion, despite my busyness.

I had to miss a finance talk that Dr. Kim recommended I see today on campus, unfortunately. Guy was a nobel laureate, and has some research that Dr. Kim recommended that I read. I'll have to catch up later. Also in the category of things I urgently need to do: finish reading Jeff Hawkins new paper, apply to my phd programs, read the research from Rob Goldstone and Olaf Sporns, and collect my thoughts on the idea that Dr. Bickle inspired and make it into a research agenda.

Outside of academic stuff, Matt and I recorded a cool song tonight. The ever-problematic titling question was solved by this webcomic. Dresden Kodac is beautiful.

Bladerunner

Lately I've been hearing a slew of references to Bladerunner as an excellent, groundbreaking scifi movie, so I decided to watch it. I saw it once as a kid, but I didn't remember much of it outside of the "test." I wonder what role that played in the development of my current enthusiasm for AI and cognitive science.

Its very noir, very Chinatown-esque. My favorite line was at the end, when the gotee-guy (who had previouly only spoken in Japanese says) "Its a shame she won't live. But then again, who does?"

Asimov

I decided, rather unwisely I'll admit, to read a novel this weekend. Asimov's Robots of Dawn. I was feeling swamped and in need of eloquence and adventure, and old Issac certainly provided.

A few comments, then.

"If the World of Dawn had a quite, sunlit Day, who on that world would clamor for a storm?"

This is a thought of Baley's to himself, reflecting on the peaceful, pleasant stagnation the extra-terrestrial human societies find themselves in. Specifically, he's speaking of the planet Aurora (ie: "Dawn"), the first human settlement. Simple enough statement, but it is a very eloquent summary of quite of bit of story-development. What amused me about this was that Asimov had seemingly been carrying about this little bit of poetry for a very long time; some of his earlier short stories contained references to "Aurora" and its clearly meant to be the same place. It made me wonder if he'd been waiting to use that turn of phrase for years and years, or if it fortuitously presented itself to him as he was writing this latter work.

More broadly, I continue to be impressed by how deeply human Asimov's writing is. The backdrop is technological, but the stories themselves are always much more about probing sensitive parts of human nature (though after all, we are really, really cool technology). His sense of humor and gravity both delight me. I laughed out loud and at length several times during the book, and several times I was impressed by its apparent (though subtle) profundity.

And unlike much of the sci-fi that has followed him, Asimov seems exuberantly hopeful about humanity's future, and confident that we can use technology for positive purposes.

But, now, I should really return to what I'm supposed to be doing; which is math.

Wealth

Wealth is a place in the sun
and a warm jacket
Wealth is a full fridge
and a working toilet

Linear Algebra: A

I got an A on a Linear Algebra quiz! The first two had been much harsher.
My Calculus professor remined me to look up the sylabus for the other, harder calculus series, and in the process I discovered that the math department offers minors in mathematics. I think I would actually really like to do this, and I think that I could get it done before next fall.

Status seeking behavior, an economic metaphor

When I was young, I read a book called the Celestine Prophesy. It's mostly mystical new-age pseudo-philosophy in a fiction-wrapper, but it does offer an interesting perspective on how people use tactics to manipulate their social status with regard to others. In the story, this was visualized by unconsciously stealing "energy" from people by being aloof, argumentative, needy, and a few other behaviors.

Mysticism aside, I think those behaviors can be recast in terms of tactics for stealing "status" from others. There's no "aura-energy" involved, just the regard of others towards ourselves and our perception of their regard. These unconscious practices are (rightly) derided in the book as negative-sum games, downward spirals where everyone ends up poorer. This is true of status-seeking behavior also: if the only source of social status one has is leeching it from others, eventually all the "energy" (or status) gets gets burned up.

The Celestine Prophecy's solution, naturally for an Age of Aquarius type book, is love. Just love people for what they are. Instead of leeching energy, people will exchange energy positively with each other and the total energy will grow rather than shrink. Very cozy imagery.

But in all seriousness, I'd like to make an analogy to economic processes. When people support themselves through predation, they can last only as long as there are productive non-predators in the population. These "doves" create value, and without them the "hawks" will end up consuming each other and finally themselves. When predation is suppressed, peaceful producers can multiply the value they produce through specialization and voluntary exchange.

I think a similar set of rules applies to individual-level interpersonal dynamics as well. People whose only source of status comes from robbing others of it can only last as high-status individuals as long as there are productive individuals around. What are "productive" individuals in terms of status? People who attain status through accomplishment, by improving themselves relative to their own former selves or creating new value for others to use.

An irony: a high-status predator may be able survive merely because of their high-status, since humans seek to affiliate themselves with other high-status individuals and rarely question the source of their status. Thus, a person could continuously roll through their attract and burn up new people in order to maintain themselves. I suspect this is what gossip is all about, though totally unconsciously.

But returning to the positive side of the economic metaphor: positive-sum status relationships can be built where each productive member supports the others by vouching for the validity of what the other members say. The support of legitimately high-status individuals for an idea gives it a much greater likelihood of consideration and acceptance, and thereby increasing the status of all involved. Think of this as voluntary association and trade, the result of which in the economic world is more wealth for all.

Snow Leopard

I've just finished installing Snow Leopard, and so far everything seems pretty much exactly the same. Which is good news, since it was already working nicely. It's as they said: painless install, nothing really visually different, but the geeky satisfaction of knowing that its now all 64 bit.

Photo post

Seems its been a while since I synced my phone, and I've got some interesting (imho) pictures to share.


My lips and hand incense burner sculpture:
I noticed an odd phenomenon about the lips: they look perfectly symmetrical when you hold them right-side-up, but totally asymmetrical upside down. Even knowing that they are asymmetrical, I still can't see the asymmetry right side up.


A while back I woke up before the sun rose (this was while I was reading A Neurocomputational Perspective), and went on a long bike ride. I found myself in this cemetary just after the sun came up, it was quite beautiful. Below is the picture of my first glimpse of the sun that morning.


Behold, a wall with interestingly peeling paint.

These are the results of my "shoot a bag of bleach in front of a black shirt with a rifle" experiment. An interesting diversity of results, I think.

Rick and I composed a pretty awesome (and hilarious) Pushkin sonnet in the back of my Philosophy and Neuroscience book. Its about science and mind, and how we're gonna revolutionize the field.


And finally, this totally sweet (if slightly overdramatic) picture I took of Rick for his website. Thats a Neverdie shirt he's wearing, you bes' b'leed it.

... and Fall Dog Bombs the Moon

This morning when I came into work, at 7am, there was a bunch of news about us bombing the moon.

I spent a while figuring out what that was all about and stumbled into some conspiracy-rants about how the Apollo astronauts saw alien ships and bases on the dark side of the moon, but were ordered to keep silent about it. I had a moment of groggily-thrilled belief, then started to notice the pattern of half baked conspiracy theorists (circular citing and untraceable references, glaring grammar errors...), and reluctantly decided to put on my skeptical disbelief-face.

It was in this mindset that I read the headline about Obama's peace prize. It took till the afternoon when a couple other people mentioned it for me to realize that it wasn't a hoax.

Crazy world.