Octopodial Chrome

Raising the Dead

Robert Uhl — 2008-07-03T11:15+07:00

Bushman’s Hole in South Africa is the deepest underwater cave in the world. Read the true story of an attempt to rescue the body of a diver who had died there. One of the best pieces I’ve read in a long, long time.

Excessive Force

Robert Uhl — 2008-07-01T10:38+07:00

On the 18th of June a young man was arrested by police; he died on Sunday. He certainly deserved to be arrested, but the manner and the results are unacceptable. While celebrating a home-team win, he and some friends passed a cluster of 10–12 police officers; he sarcastically commented, wow, it seems like there’s a lot of crime on this corner. Very dumb, considering that he was breaking the law by drinking in public. Kids, if you’re going to mock the police, don’t do it while breaking the law. But the police—from reports—violently over-reacted: eight officers and a supervisor piled onto him, beating him and driving off his friends. In the struggle, he stopped breathing, was rushed to a hospital and eventually died of his injuries.

As I noted, he deserved to be cited or arrested, for blatant stupidity if nothing else. But the right thing to do would have been for two or three policemen to have approached him and then cited or arrested him. The wrong thing was to pile on. If he had resisted arrest, then it would have been appropriate to subdue him.

We are free citizens in a free republic: the police are our public servants. They should use politeness first, and force only when necessary. They should not see us as cattle to be herded.

This ties in with the abuse of SWAT teams and warrant-serving by force. By default, warrants should be served by a few officers: knock on the door, serve the warrant and get on with life. Sending a SWAT team to arrest an optometrist for a non-violent crime escalates matters unreasonably.

Yes, there are instances (many instances, perhaps) where force is necessary. But when force becomes the default; when law enforcement is held to a lower standard of accountability (note that the eggshell skull rule holds that you’re responsible even for unforeseeable consequences—but it’s not applied to the police), when citizens are routinely slain by their public servants—in that case, something has to change.

Eat Food

Robert Uhl — 2008-06-30T22:50+07:00

Michæl Pollan has some nontraditional advice on how to be healthy: eat food; not too much; mostly plants.

The full article is actually a wonderful examination of how nutritionism has damaged the American diet. Instead of eating healthy food, we flock to unhealthy food with a few extra nutrients added. Believe it or not, removing fat or adding oat bran or fibre does not a healthy product make.

Our own public servants are of no use, for they are to beholden to the producers. Pollan details how back in 1977 the federal government was to have released a recommendation to reduce consumption of meat; due to pressure from the cattle industry, the recommendation was instead choose meats, poultry and fish that will reduce saturated-fat intake, which is not at all the same thing. It’s much like advising choose a method of driving which maximises leg and arm motion instead of just saying exercise more.

Fortunately, Pollan also offers some good advice: eat food; not too much; mostly plants. Eat real food, not manufactured food products. Processed food-like substances trigger our taste sensors, but there’s no there there: they don’t actually contain the substances we need to survive. Avoid them, and you’ll be better off. Don’t eat too much food; gluttony is a sin for a reason (actually, all sins are sins for a reason, but that’s another blog entry). Eat mostly plants: they are chock-full of nutritious goodness. Meat’s good stuff too; you should have meat in your diet. It’s tasty, and it’s a good way of getting certain proteins in a hassle-free manner. Livestock can be an excellent way of eking out subsistence from barren grassland; some animals, pigs in particular, are excellent mechanisms for turning garbage into food. But too much meat is most definitely not what the doctor ordered. If you want my advice, do as the Church teaches and abstain from meat Wednesdays, Fridays, during Lent and Advent (there are several other fasts, but those are the big ones): you’ll cut your meat consumption down considerably, but you’ll still get what you want and what you need. Plus, self-discipline is a virtue.

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

A Victory for Reason

Robert Uhl — 2008-06-26T17:07+07:00

Today is a great day, a red-letter day, a triumph for sanity and a victory for reason. Today a majority the Supreme Court of the United States decided to actually read their copies of the Constitution (something the justices too-rarely do). Today the Court affirmed that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

As the decision noted, the public-safety impact—whether positive or negative—is none of the Court’s business. All that matters is the constitutionality of a total gun ban. Those of you who hate guns: amend the federal constitution if you wish. I’d oppose your efforts, but I’d also applaud your honesty. If you don’t like what the Constitution says, change the Constitution—don’t pretend it says something else.

We have decades more work ahead of us before things change for the better. The next thing we need to do is to prove that the Second Amendment is incorporated by the Fourteenth and thus binding on the states. After that, we need to prove that onerous and expensive licensing requirements are unconstitutional (under decided law, one cannot license a right—can you imagine having to get a speech license, or a voting license?). Then we will need to demonstrate that machine guns, grenades, bazookas and other military arms are legitimately protected by the Second Amendment.

Only then will Americans once again be free with respect to firearms. If course, there are a lot of other things we need to work on (e.g. the over-expansive interpretation of the Commerce Clause). But this is excellent news for almost everyone: excellent for gun owners, who are free to move into Washington, DC; excellent for the poor, who are most subject to violence and can now defend themselves; and excellent for women, who can better defend themselves against assailants. It’s only bad news for criminals, whose victims will now be armed, and for gun control advocates. Personally, I’m quite happy to see members of either or both of those groups have a rotten day.

The Murder of US Manufacturing

Robert Uhl — 2008-06-24T10:42+07:00

Sorry for the paucity of blog updates the past few months. I’ve been working an exceedingly time-consuming project at work and have had very little personal time.

Here’s a good read about the decline of American manufacturing. It argues–convincingly IMHO—that the business philosophies of the 1970s destroyed our economic might.

My Uncle Makes the News

Robert Uhl — 2008-06-06T09:20+07:00

Most of my friends know that I’ve an uncle who is a Catholic priest. Father Uncle Joseph (as I am amused to call him) has spent the last nine years at St. Ann’s in Kaufman, Tx., where he has done a lot of good for his church and his community. His recent transfer has actually made the local paper, no small feat in a Protestant town (some years ago he even got the award for preaching, again a bit of a big deal when it’s awarded by Protestants). I wish him the best of luck in his new posting; I’m sure that he’ll do well there.

We're Driving Toward Disaster

Robert Uhl — 2008-05-28T10:30+07:00

James Kunstler argues that Americans are literally driving toward disaster. We think that we can magically wish our way out of the energy and food cost increases.

He may not be correct that we’ve reached Peak Oil; however, I think it’s pretty clear that whether it is in the future or the recent past, we will not have cheap oil forever. There is certainly a speculative boom in oil right now; the price should come down somewhat at some point (of course, speculative bubbles can last for years…). But in the long term, we know that oil will get scarcer, and burning it in order to get around town just won’t be an efficient use thereof.

Return of the Lisp Machine

Robert Uhl — 2008-05-28T09:40+07:00

Arto Bendiken notes that Lively Kernel is a reinvention of the Lisp Machine concept. For those who’ve not heard of them, Lisp Machines were really great pieces of work: at a time when command-lines and static software which crashed were the norm, they provided full GUIs, dynamic software and elegant error recovery. Perhaps Lively Kernel can bring some of that coolness into the 21st century.

Computing really is about continually reinventing the wheel.

Australian Driver Hits Fifty Cyclists

Robert Uhl — 2008-05-26T22:28+07:00

An Australian driver in a fit of road-pique (I like that better than road-rage—it conveys the pathetic nature of the emotion better) tried to kill a line of 50 cyclists.

’Tis a pity Australia has done away with the death penalty; the driver is a prime candidate.

The Freedom to Say No

Robert Uhl — 2008-05-26T19:30+07:00

Elaine McArdle reports that gender disparity in science and technology may be a result of gender preferences—that is, two different studies show that men and women seek different things (big surprise, huh?). Of course, anyone who actually dealt with men and women would know this, but I guess it has taken science time to move from thinking of women as defective men, to thinking of them as the same as men, and finally to thinking of them as something different from but no less important than men. This is progress.

The details of the studies are interesting: one found that men preferred working with tools and women preferred dealing with people; another found that math-precocious men preferred to work with inorganic stuff while math-precocious women preferred working with living stuff. This led to more men in engineering and more women in medicine and biology.

Lockhart's Lament

Robert Uhl — 2008-05-23T21:46+07:00

The Mathematical Association of America have published and insightful condemnation of the methods by which we teach mathematics. A must-read for anyone who has ever learnt math, taught math or who has children who may one day learn math. Really good stuff.

Me, I think math should be taught using rhythmomachia. But I’m a loon.

Sunblock Kills Coral

Robert Uhl — 2008-05-23T15:24+07:00

It turns out that sunblock kills coral reeves (yes, I prefer reeves to reefs). So it looks like the choice is to burn and get cancer, or to kill coral—or to stay in the shade. I choose the shade.

In Which Robert Turns 30

Robert Uhl — 2008-05-23T12:10+07:00

Well, I’ve managed to make it through thirty years of life. I don’t really know how it happened: one day I was in college thinking that the thirty-year-old alumni were ancient, and then one day I was old.

I guess it’s immature to want to be younger, and I don’t actually want to be a twenty-year-old again, as I was kinda a twit at that age. All of us are, probably. OTOH, it sure was nice to be so carefree and sheltered. My greatest worry was that I’d make a bad grade or get caught brewing beer in the dorm. In the grand scheme of things, doing badly in school or getting scolded for breaking the rules are nothing. It was nice.

It’s not too bad being thirty though. I can do things I couldn’t dare to imagine when I was twenty. I can buy things I couldn’t afford. I’m a lot smarter and a lot more experienced.

It is a bit annoying to think how old thirty-year-olds once looked to me, and realise that I look that old now. Oh well…

John Graduates!

Robert Uhl — 2008-05-20T09:44+07:00

On Saturday my brother John Richard Uhl graduated from Mesa State College with a degree in that queen of subjects, History. For the first time in over a year, all four of us Uhl brothers were together to celebrate. We went to church, broke bread, drank beer, smoked cigars, saw Prince Caspian (about which more later) and just generally enjoyed one another’s company. It was great spending time with one another; I know that my parents were glad to have all their boys with them again.

I had given John a hard time in the past for taking so long to graduate (he’s twenty-five: at his age I owned a house and Tom was married), but I take it back now. For one thing, he paid his own tuition—it’s not like he was living off of our parents the whole time. And if a guy is paying his own way, who cares how much of his life he spends learning? In fact, that’s exactly what John was doing: he figured that he might as well make the most of the chance to educate himself. I can’t say that I disagree. He’s certainly had some great experiences, not least spending a year in Greece studying archæology.

After church on Sunday mom put on a party for John. She baked and cooked and baked and laid out quite a spread: sandwiches and cookies and cakes and meringues, oh my! It was a very pleasant afternoon.

Now that he has graduated, he’ll be working this summer and then will head off to OCS in hopes of becoming a naval officer. His studies in history should have him well-prepared for that job.

Congratulations to him, and best of luck in his new career!

Graduation Day

Robert Uhl — 2008-05-14T22:22+07:00

Today marks eight years since Black Sunday, that sad day when I donned cap and gown and was cast headlong into the working world. I’ve since spent twice as many years out of school as I did in it.

When I look at what I wrote on the fourth anniversary of my graduation, I don’t see that I’m much further along at 29 than I was at 25: making a little more; still ensconced in my condo; still single; still driving the same car; still with very few local friends. But there’s hope: I’m working on a shift in my career to something I find more interesting; I’m renovating my condo; I’ve actually been on some dates. I’m actually pretty happy with my car, though. It’s nice driving an auto that will be old enough to vote next year. And I’ve added a few friends, which is progress. Finally, I’m working on a pretty big change—one which I’ll announce here if everything works out as planned.

So things are looking up. But, today just as four years ago and as eight years ago, I miss school. I miss being surrounded by my friends, guys with interests the same as mine. I miss being surrounded by the highest concentration of attractive women I’ll ever experience. I miss being able to pull three all-nighters in a row. I miss employing some of the best minds in the world to educate me. I miss not having bills to pay every month. I miss getting three months of vacation every year. I miss being young and foolish and unconcerned with the real world.

On the other hand, I quite like having money. I quite like being able to afford the things I ant to own. I like owning my own place, and setting my own rules. I rather enjoy not being a complete and utter git (well, by comparison with by 18- or 19-year-old self anyway).

Still, I miss sharing an apartment with Phil and Darren, brewing beer in the dorm kitchen, sneaking girls in past visitation hours, going to parties, hanging out at the library, cutting class to go golfing, going shooting in Oklahoma on the weekends, walking to class with a pipe clenched in my teeth, wearing a tweed coat every day and otherwise just plain having fun.

Today, as four years ago, as eight years ago, I miss school.

The Truth about Health Care

Robert Uhl — 2008-05-14T20:24+07:00

Dr. Lawrence Huntoon has written a great article about health care costs. He says pretty much what I’ve been saying for years, so naturally I think him a genius. Medical insurance is no longer insurance at all, but rather inefficiently pre-paid medical care. Since it is generally obtained through an employer (due to tax laws dating back to the Second World War), it is more inefficient and harder to keep. The uninsured face a nasty tax liability ($19,000,000,000 per year). The way to fix rapidly-escalating health care costs is via a market mechanism using medical savings accounts.

Of course, this applies to just about everything. We’d all be better off if the money we’d spent on Social Security all these years were in a 401(k) or IRA or other investment vehicle.

No Dashes or Spaces

Robert Uhl — 2008-05-14T08:57+07:00

We’ve all seen those credit-card-entry (and other) forms which ask us to leave out dashes, spaces and other punctuations when entering our numbers. Never mind that credit card numbers are naturally written with spaces, that Social Security numbers use dashes and that phone numbers have a number of different representations involving dashes, parentheses, spaces, periods and plus signs. The really ridiculous thing is that removing extraneous punctuation is dead-simple for a computer to do. But these lazy programmers offload a single line of code’s worth of work onto the thousands or millions of visitors to their sites.

Well, Steve Friedl has decided to shame these morons. His well-intentioned attempt is probably doomed, but I wish him luck.

Stephen's Back!

Robert Uhl — 2008-05-07T08:59+07:00

One week ago early this morning (very early this morning…) my youngest brother returned from his first deployment to Iraq. Thanks be to God, he is healthy and unharmed. It was good to hang out with him, Mom, Tom and Em in San Diego for a few days.

Let Loose the Washboards of War

Robert Uhl — 2008-05-06T11:36+07:00

It appears that American soldiers overseas have rediscovered the utility of washboards. America’s last surviving washboard company makes a portable kit consisting of a small washboard (originally designed for travelling salesman), a tin bucket, lye soap, clothesline, clothespins and foot powder. They’re $25 and thousands have been sent to the troops.

I’m thinking of buying a set for myself…

Worried about Weapons of Mass Destruction?

Robert Uhl — 2008-04-27T19:06+07:00

Since the black date of 11 September 2001, many folks have been concerned about nuclear, biological or chemical terrorist attacks on American soil. A retired US Army sergeant dispels many of the myths about NBC warfare. Basically, as long as you don’t die immediately and keep your head, you’ll be okay. A must-read.

Christ is Risen!

Robert Uhl — 2008-04-27T12:17+07:00

Crist aras! Crist soþlice aras!

Today is the greatest of feasts: today we celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Today we mark the destruction of death’s power over man, because (while we still die) we know that we will each rise again just as Christ did.

Christus ist auferstanden! Er ist wahrhaftig auferstanden!

There are a few competing theories of the exact mechanism of how Christ’s Passion and Resurrection achieved salvation. Was it His Passion which did it? Was His death a sacrifice to pay for the sins of all? Was it His Resurrection which did it instead? By uniting the human and the divine in Himself and rising, did He make it possible for all men to rise? Was it both together? Was it something else, the Harrowing of Hell perhaps? I’m no theologian—all I know is that Christ died, and rose, and that consequently we all shall.

Christus resurrexit! Vere resurrexit!

Speaking of the Harrowing of Hell: as a boy one of my favourite images was what the scene must have been like after Christ died. In St. John Chrysostom’s famous Paschal sermon (which is worth a read in itself, and is better than anything I can write), he has this to say about what happened therein:

Hell was in an uproar because it was done away with.
It was in an uproar because it is mocked.
It was in an uproar, for it is destroyed.
It is in an uproar, for it is annihilated.
It is in an uproar, for it is now made captive.
Hell took a body, and discovered God.
It took earth, and encountered Heaven.
It took what it saw, and was overcome by what it did not see.
O death, where is thy sting?
O Hades, where is thy victory?

I always imagined Hell’s receiving-room to be something like a modern-day mailroom, with a legion of demonic clerks taking in, sorting and filing souls. I had this mental image of one of them hiding behind his desk, frantically trying to get ahold of Satan on the phone: Ummm…Boss, we’ve got a problem down here. He’s here. Oh d—— And then the line goes dead, and Satan reflects on the ideaalises that his scheme is rather finally broken. It’s a silly little thought, but I always enjoyed imagining it.

Христос воскрес! Воистину воскрес!

Just to show off Unicode, here’s the Paschal greeting in a few other languages:

Քրիստոս յարեաւ ի մեռելոց՜ Օրհնեալ է Յարութիւնն Քրիստոսի՜

ئەيسا تىرىلدى! ھەقىقەتىنلا تىرىلدى!

ക്രിസ്തു ഉയിര്‍ത്തെഴുന്നേറ്റു! തീര്‍ച്ചയായും ഉയിര്‍ത്തെഴുന്നേറ്റു!

!المسيح قام! حقا قام

ქრისტე აღსდგა! ჭეშმარიტად აღსდგა!

And of course, in the language which made it famous: Χριστός ἀνέστη! Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη!

Christ is risen! Truly He is risen!

Lisp for the Web

Robert Uhl — 2008-04-23T12:33+07:00

Adam Petersen demonstrates how to create a simple polling web app in Common Lisp—in around 70 lines of code! It’s not perfect (as one reddit comment noted, he needs to escape his strings for HTML), but it’s a pretty cool demonstration of how Lisp can serve as a rapid development platform.

Lisp isn’t perfect, but it’s better than the alternatives out there.

Big Trouble

Robert Uhl — 2008-04-23T10:09+07:00

Regular readers of this blog know that I’m a reasonably strict libertarian in both economic and social issues. I tend to think that the State has no business regulating private affairs, and my definition of private is fairly broad. I don’t believe, for example, that marriage should be an institution of the State (it is God’s creation, not man’s). This has led me to oppose the anti-polygamy laws not because I support polygamy (I oppose it) but because I don’t think that punishing polygamy is the proper business of the State any more than punishing the wearing of shorts by grown men (an offensive practise far more common) is the proper business of the State.

Rich Lowry has an article which gives me pause. He points out that polygamy as practised in Islamic and fundamentalist Mormon circles inevitably results in some pretty severe social effects. The most notable is that a few high-status men have many wive, leaving low-status men on the fringes of society, with little hope of marriage and children.

He’s right about the problem, although he doesn’t seem to realise that this is an effect of polygyny (multiple wives) rather than polygamy. A similar effect would probably be seen with polyandry (IIRC that was common in Tibet at one point, with brothers marrying a single wife).

The article provides a good reason for polygyny to be illegal: its negative effects spill over to the population as a whole. It may be that even a few polygynous marriages would be enough to have widespread negative effects.

I wonder though if those effects would hold in a generally polygamous society in which there were group marriages, polygynous marriages, polyandrous marriages and true marriages. And I wonder if polygamy would actually be all that common even were it legal. Certainly the majority of the churches would refuse to perform such marriages (though no doubt the Episcopalians would rush to be the first to allow them). Most women would object to a plural marriage as strenuously as they would to an affair. And I think most men really don’t want the extra bother.

Still, it does demonstrate that private choices can have public consequences.

Giardia Hysteria

Robert Uhl — 2008-04-21T23:16+07:00

Those of us who grew up camping and hiking in the 1980s and 1990s were constantly warned of the dangers of giardia lamblia and giardiasis. We were cautioned that if we ever drank water from a stream without first purifying it we risked our health and perhaps our very lives. Giardiasis was reputed to cause six months of uncontrollable diarrhœa; it was supposedly found in almost any stream, river or lake; it was bad juju.

Upon reflection, this didn’t really make a whole lot of sense. Old books are full of ways to find good water—they aren’t full of ways to purify water (although they might recommend boiling when in doubt). It always seemed a bit strange to me that the purported symptoms lasted for six months, a curiously round figure. Wild animals drink wild water, and they rarely seem to be suffering from intestinal trouble. Our ancestors—and many in the uncivilised world—drink wild water all the time. And then there are many of our fellows who do the same. I’m proud to say that I’ve been drinking water from streams for years, and I’ve never had a problem yet.

Well, it turns out that the giardia threat is massively overblown. Back in the 1980s some testing of wild water in the Sierra Nevadas was done: it turns out that the most contaminated water was purer than that found in San Francisco and that all but the two worst sites purer than that in Los Angeles. Even in other parts of the country, at the very worst sites one would need to drink almost 3 gallons of water in order to have a 50% chance of getting consuming enough giardia to have an effect.

Worse, it seems that 1 in 14 people have giardia in them already, and that the most likely path of contamination when camping is by food. Whoops.

All that said, there are plenty of other nasty microörganisms which can be found in water, and one needs to exercise some care. Areas which are commonly used by people are less safe than isolated areas; water that is stagnant is less safe than running water; it’s always safest to purify water one way or another. But really, it’s just not that big a deal.

I don’t really plan on carrying a purification kit. If I need to, I can boil it. And there’s something wonderfully tasty about ice-cold, crystal clear water from a mountain stream which runs through a stream bed lined with leaves. Iodine-tainted, bleached, boiled or filtered water are not the same thing.