Scheming

I need to do my homework, which is working on Scheme. I worked on Scheme before, but alas, that was a long time ago. We’ll see what I remember.

Chart at the NYT

A beautiful chart visually representing the economy since 1965.

Counting syllables

We passed the School, where Children strove

At Recess – in the Ring -

We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain -
We passed the Setting Sun -

It occurs to me that Dickinson’s choice of slant rhymes (Ring and Sun) also represents anticipated cognitive shift.

In the beginning of the poem, the speaker portrays the carriage as being in motion, slowly but surely passing the gazing grain, the school, and the sun, but then as if the speaker has caught herself, she reverses her perspective: “Or rather – He passed Us -”.

Notice too that this line has syllables while the second line has eight: “The Dews drew quivering and Chill -”.

Rather than the default meter with eight then six syllables, it is six then eight–it helps reinforce the reversal of perspective–instead of viewing Death and herself as passing the setting sun, it is the sun passing them–they are in the presence of immortality and move slower than a day–and to borrow a theme from Star Trek, all Death, the speaker, and Immortality are out of phase of Time.

She thereon returned to the usual eight-then-six construction, with another off-rhyme to warn of another cognitive shift:

For only Gossamers, my Gown -

My Tippet – only Tulle -

We paused before a House that seemed

A Swelling of the Ground -

The Roof was scarcely visible -

The Cornice – in the Ground -

To reinforce again the idea of being out of phase of Time, she explains as Data would in Time’s Arrow:

Since then – ’tis Centuries – and yet

Feels shorter than the Day

I first surmised the Horses’ Heads

Were toward Eternity -

I don’t know if I am being stupid or not, in venturing this guesswork, but I can understand why “Because I could not stop for Death” has been endlessly unpacked and is regarded as the one of the most memorable and favorited of many great poems.

why imperial fraction is better for binary than metric system

I found a metric system-promoting website, where they had a question-and-answer page trying to cut down all the arguments against converting to the metric system

Why Not Metric For Us?

Here is one of them that pertains to my thinking. It is the idea that the binary can be easily converted to octal or hexadecimal numbers, so we should use base 8 or base 16 for calculations.

Base 12 or 16 is better than 10, as 12 divides by 2,3,4 and 6, 16 by 2,4,8 and 16, while 10 divides only by 2 and 5.

1. Ok, sure, the bigger numbers you choose, by the more other numbers you can divide them. Unfortunately for a larger base you would need a larger set of symbols, too. So are you seriously suggesting a base 12 or base 16 system? While you are defending American culture and tradition with the English system, you are asking people to give up such a tradition as the decimal system and use an arbitrary base-12 or base-16 notation for measuring? Please: Keep the decimal system, but abolish the English system!
2. How about dividing 16 by 3 or 12 by 5? The fractional beauty lasts not too far. You can always find numbers that your base does not divide by. With decimals, you can represent any number to any accuracy.
3. And after all: Base 12 or 16 would not help the English system but only make it even more convoluted! Base 12 is useful for inch-foot conversion only. For merely all other conversions it’s useless! Same for base 16, which is useful maybe for oz-pound conversion, but an even greater nightmare for everything else!

I finally decided to look for where Professor Roger Doering said made metric system bad. Here is the lecture he gave:

Professor: If you want to deal with a .8, this becomes an interesting process. .8 is nasty to represent a binary. It won’t be clean. It’s an infinite series. Like representing 1/3 as a decimal number. It’s not clear. We can change it and make it clean but maybe we should work on cleaning until you see what’s going on. We’ll convert the .8, add the binary point. We’ll start with .8 and we’ll double .8. So I’m going to double that. It becomes 1.6. At that point, I take the digit in front of the binary point and I write it up here. Okay. So we’re starting with this digit. [on board]. Then we get to subtract that so it’s now .6. Double that and becomes 1.2. And write the 1. Okay. Then I take off 1, take the .2 and double it to .4. Write the 0. I double . 4. It becomes .8, write a 0 and go oops I’m back to where I started. It’s an infinite repeating binary fraction. Not very pretty, is it. So yeah?

Male Student: So from a different value it’d terminate right?

Professor: If we put 3/4, it’d terminate very nicely. If we choose .75, double that, we get 1.5. Which will be a 1 there. Take away the 1. Take .5, double it, get another 1. And we’re done. We have a 1/2 plus a quarter. That’s how the digits work. If you look at the value of digits in decimal, this is 2, 1, 4, 8… [on board]. Going the other direction, this is 1/2, 1/4, 1/8. Those are the values of the digits. So numbers like 1/2 a 1/4 and 3/16 are wonderful in the binary system. People with the metric system really hurt us. I’m not kidding. Fractions don’t work well on the computer. The old fractions we used did. So not a wonderful change.

So, what he seemed to have said was that .8 was not easy to represent in binary without getting trapped into loops and approximation. We can say he doesn’t like .8 or .9, he prefers .75, .5, .25, and anything of those nature divided by 2.

And that was how he defended how we divided the inch, always by 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32. In fact, those numbers are exactly 2 to the power of a negative number. 2^-1, 2^-2, 2^-3, etc. and is just reverse of 2 to the power of a positive number.

I was wrong, however, in thinking that the inch was also divided by 1/3. It’s not. It’s only divided by 1/2 repeatedly. So, there is something graceful about 1/256, 2/256, 3/256, that make binary less nasty.

It looks like from the lecture, .75 is presented as 0.11

.25, double it, and get .5, so that’s a 0, double it again, and get a 1, so I assume it’s represented as 0.01

.5, double it, and get 1, so it would be 0.10

Very neat idea.

How about 15/16, which is .9375. double it, and get 1.875

.875 * 2 = 1.75

.75 * 2 = 1.5

.5 * 2 = 1

Therefore, you get 0.1111

Whereas, 3/16, which is 0.1875

.1875 * 2 = .375

.375 * 2 = .75

.75 * 2 = 1.5

.5 * 2 = 1

Therefore, you get 0.0011, which is quite right and elegant because 00 = 0, 01 = 1, 10 = 2, and 11 = 3.

Beyond the inch, however, the imperial system is indefensible. 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet in a yard, etc.

Alan

Power doesn’t always corrupt. It is something to think about with regard to Apple’s capricious treatment of the iPhone developers.

altruistic economy

Altruism in Economics

It is useful to remember the guest-host relationship was important in ancient Greece. Altruism was simply assumed of everyone, and freeloaders were definitely punished, though they mythologized it as Zeus killing them. On the whole, if you offer to host a guest, both hosts and guests are under certain obligations not to abuse the relationship between strangers. Sadly, this kind of altruism faded with industrialization and exponential increase of population. Perhaps, one day, even with six billion people on the planet, strangers will be kind to strangers.

If you thought Star Trek wasn’t faithful to the true spirit of Star Trek, read this wonderful counterargument.

re: The Oral Caress

To meet you, and have me allured to
The Mystery of the Mouth
I long to take my thickness
In you -
Completely exacted.
Gently, you relax and I can feel
Your tongue in contact,
Making me moan as my tender head
Aches from the friction
And my throbbing furrow struggles
To emancipate the warm composite pearl
I squeal
And hold myself as long as I can
Until –

Your mouth listless, eager
Your tongue desiring to please
To welcome and caress this phallus guest
And you, relaxing, lie
Against the pillow,
For the thrust –

I light a cordial smile
As our eyes mutual meet
Then you close yours
In anticipation
Of an uncordial projection

As you give your lustful consent
To my abuse
I thrust hard and repeated and
Exhibit against your Tongue
Just sliding over –
Then slip into the deep
And I can hear your moan
And feel the vibration
Of your throat.
I gasp and cannot contain myself
And I get satisfaction
And free
I shake as the glow
Of dreams and fantasies
Light my path as if I could find the way.

tired

yawning mouth, sagging eyes, live to fire. i do not know why i am so split amongst these posts, unable to splurge my thoughts.

i got notice that i am unable to answer. it was that i had unusually low income, and does that mean i will have to pay back all those money they gave me in grants? it seems unfair as they should have told me earlier that there was something wrong. they are foolish, the lots of them, not to have asked question.

maybe i should have asked before i accepted the grants. will i be in trouble now? should i have indicated the size of my saving? i don’t know. it seems too late now. and i will wait and see what they do.

The truth

The truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind -