Indiana Jones and the changing of time

Watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom last weekend. I had not remembered very much of it. It probably won't pass the new sensibilities of today. I found the depiction of India and Indians somewhat offensive.

In contrast Raiders of the Lost Ark did not offend me but would John Rhys Davies as Sallah be accused of cultural appropriation today?

Netflix = Cable

Signed up for Netflix and the first thing I did was to see what movies were available:
Edge of Tomorrow? Nope.
Matrix? Nope.
Whiplash? Nope.
Snow White and the Huntsman? Nope.

It feels like cable TV - a whole lot of nothing except old reruns. I wanted movies on demand and all I got was cable.

Traveling over the holidays

We decided to try traveling to Penang and Bangkok this past Christmas season. The lines at Dulles airport were long but the (cute red headed) CBP agent was surprisingly cheerful when she checked our passports and let us through. That alone was enough to make my day.

Surprisingly, we didn't have to remove laptops from our carry-ons nor did we have to remove our shoes. This was not the case at other airports however. In Dubai and Bangkok we had to take the laptops out of our bags. We didn't remove our shoes although some passengers did and the security staff there did not indicate anything to us. The security procedures aren't evenly applied to say the least.

One surprise (for me who doesn't travel much) was the introduction of machines for reading passports at Dulles. However, it didn't seem to make much of a dent in the lines although it is hard to tell when you're the one in a long line. As always, helpful airport staff directed us to which counters we could wait at since we weren't eligible for the machines.

Automated passport processing has already been in place for a while in Penang (at least since last year). Place the passport in the bin, take a fingerprint scan and then you're done. This is only for Malaysian citizens however. It isn't clear to me what this has to be the case. Now that most passports have biometric information (and possibly chipped) it seems that almost everyone who has a new passport should be able to be processed by a machines. It is way more pleasant than waiting in a long line and much faster.

Penang and Bangkok in December

Wow, the weather was cool - I have forgotten that this was possible 28 degrees C for most of the time. Of course it is also monsoon season with its annual floods. This is in contrast to the heat and humidity of July and August when we usually visit.

I hate the switch back to standard time

It gets dark too early.
More time for nefarious elements of society to roam and search for prey.

As it is we already spend most of the year in DST.
Why not just make it permanent.

College disappointment

The most disappointing thing about college today is the same thing that it was when I was in college nearly 25 years ago. Life still revolves around alcohol. (Yes, it was fun - sort of - I may have done it just to fit in perhaps - but after I graduated, I realized that my time could have been better spent actually learning new things, ideas, and subjects.)

If anything, it sounds like college students have not changed all that much - and in some ways have perhaps gotten worse. Triggered by this article:

I'm a student at Princeton, and before I even arrived on campus my freshman year, I heard the Tiger Inn stories: competitive projectile vomiting, harmonious chanting of "tits for beer," and naked guys standing on tables while strumming their "penis guitars." I looked on--kind of horrified, but also transfixed. Then sophomore year came around, and a bunch of my girlfriends made a decision that blew my mind. Tiger Inn. They were going to try to be a part of it.

My friends aren't the only women to embrace a college culture that I think is best defined by the term "fratty": extreme rowdiness induced by the consumption of a whole lot of alcohol. An upcoming study from Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, which will be released in October, finds that college women today are more likely than men to exceed the weekly drink limits suggested by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. In 2009, the Washington University School of Medicine reported a similar trend: Women in college drank excessive amounts of alcohol 40 percent more often than they did in 1979, while the numbers for men didn't change. Then there were the Miami University hotel shenanigans that went viral in 2010: college women having sex in the caterer's closet, playing toss with crystal vases, and attempting to urinate in the bathroom sinks.

Growing old

A post discussing Niall Ferguson became one that also discussed Chomsky and among other things how scholars behave as they get older. Do they get less smart? Do they take more risks in terms of what they say?

In general (not just scholars) there are at least two stereotypes that persist in my mind:

1. We become wiser, gentler and more patient.
2. We become crankier, cantankerous, rude and impatient.

I find myself falling into the second bucket these days.

Coursera certificates

At some time Coursera used to call them certificates but now they have changed them to “statement of accomplishment”. But whatever they are calling them I find them to be incredibly distracting. Unfortunately I seem to be unable to rise above them (as others can) and work on my own pace (in "archive" mode) and say “Begone with you Coursera certificate”.

I’m feeling some angst about this because I have hit a slew of courses that seem intent on using quizzes and homeworks not to teach but to test. These are the courses that only give you one attempt at getting the answers and this one attempt is the only one that counts as credit toward the certificate. A lot of times it also tests facts and recall rather than interpretationThis is of course the typical traditional college approach. While this doesn’t prevent me from multiple attempts it feels as though my efforts are diluted.

Irrational? You bet. So I try to say to myself, "the statement of accomplishment is meaningless". (And if one reads the fine print that comes with the statement it is readily apparent how meaningless it is.) Part of me wants to protest against these courses. Is unenrolling a better form of protest or a remaining a non participant until the course goes into archive?

The benefits of an office job

1. Snow days like today. Federal government is closed because of Snowquester.
2. If I injure myself - sprained ankle or dislocated shoulder I can still do some work. No need to use sick days and even get paid unlike other service or construction jobs.
3. Tele-work

Can you be addicted to online learning?

There has been addiction to food, sex, TV, video games, and the list goes on. Is online learning an addiction? Since signing up for Coursera I’ve been going so busy with courses that I’ve barely had time do anything else - blog for instance.

Or is this another form of technology addiction rather than learning per se?

Coursera thoughts

Enrolled in a few courses and the method of presentations differ:

1. Professor stands in front of a screen and projects slides with some notes made using a tablet PC which then gets thrown onto the screen
2. Khan academy type approach with “real time” writing/slides with highlights as the professor goes through the points
3. Slides with a background voice and occasional face time.

I’m a little undecided whether this is the way of the future. Method 1 is the most boring. It reminds me of being in class and doesn’t really leverage technology to the fullest. Perhaps its because this is the method most professors are used to. Similarly for method 3.
The Khan academy approach is the most engaging though probably the hardest to produce especially if the slides cover a difficult topic. I tend to drift off less in this approach.

The major problem I have with Coursera is when watching the videos I can’t ‘flip’ through the slides without rewinding the video. I almost need two computer screens or print out the slides. The split screen doesn’t work too well on my monitor.

The discussion forums are - well - discussion forums. There is a lot of noise to filter through though I’ve found it interesting and useful to look through them. I would like to participate more but time constraints preclude that.

The reason I am signed up for so many courses is that I am afraid the course won’t be offered again. Why not automatically re-offer the course? I am also worried that all the course materials will go off the server once the course is completed. Coursera isn’t very clear on the policies regarding course material - except to say it varies by professor. The main problem seems to be people downloading the videos and reposting them on YouTube and I can see why they wouldn’t want that. In which case they should just make the material available.

For instance I can’t really see what a course is like unless I enroll and if the material doesn’t look too interesting the I un-enroll. But what if a course is over and I would like to look at the materials? I presume I would have to do the same but would the material be available? I probably wouldn’t get a certificate but that isn’t my main concern.

Which brings me to another point: I was surprised to see the intensity in getting that certificate. Is there really a value to the certificate in a labor market? I’m in an academic bubble so I don’t really know. But because of the desire to get a certificate it is not unexpected to find that there are concerns about cheating and plagiarism.

In short, it is unclear what Coursera is really about - is it a substitute for college classes? I don’t think so. If anything it might be used to leverage some classes especially intro level classes. For instance, if I were a professor I might want to license with Coursera to have some courses made available - not because I’m too lazy to teach - but I can use it to double down on the intensity of the class.

One of my professors used to have us do the reading before class. The incentive was that the beginning of every class was a quiz that counted toward the grade on that reading. The quiz served as feedback as to what material was confusing or unclear - something that he wanted to know early on. I would substitute the background reading with Coursera videos.

One course that I am in is Scott Page’s Model Thinking. This is turning out to be a general overview/survey type course. Instead of doing Netlogo demos in class I would use Scott’s videos as pre-class assignment and spend class time actually doing Netlogo programming.

Is Coursera going anywhere? Yes and no. I am intensely grateful for these opportunities to learn something new and Coursera is the way to go. The quizzes and exams force me to go down a road and the certificate is an incentive, I’ll admit that. After all MIT’s OCW has been around for years and every year I say I’ll try it out but never did. Do I think that it will replace college level courses? Not entirely. It may cut down time to finish if some the courses can be substitute for intro level classes.

Unconditional vs conditional probability in burglaries

One of the things we do when we go out of town for an extended period of time is to double lock all our doors, etc. Usually if we’re out for the day - to work, for instance - we don’t bother doing this. Is this irrational?

Yes: If the probability of being burgled is an iid process.


But should I be thinking conditional probability? If the probability of being burgled depends on whether the burglar thinks the house is empty then perhaps this is rational behavior, since the probability that the house is empty is larger when we're away?

Crime, boobytraps and zombies

Now that school is in full swing, fear of crime seems to have returned to our neighborhood. In the listserv, reports of strangers knocking on doors, casing the neighborhoods are starting to creep in. Someone pointed out that they are just people looking for manual work e.g. clearing shrubs, etc. As has been said before the biggest victim in any crime is trust.

I’ve been thinking of ways of making our house more burglar proof.

• Window bars - unheard of in our neighborhood and in danger of becoming rare even in New York City. Then I remember that not only does it keep others out it also traps us inside.
• Alarm system - does it really help? If it’s a smash and grab as it usually is it won’t do much. The burglar knows he has about 10-20 minutes before anyone really responds - enough time to grab stuff and leave.

What I’d really like to do is to lay down some booby traps - Indiana Jones style, or landmines - unless I trigger them myself.

Another alternative - become a hoarder, i.e. have so much stuff in the house that its hard to find anything and even walk around.


Well, what about a zombie proof house? Definitely - although in a real zombie attack the house needs its own power source. I don’t see one in that design.

Confusing action with accomplishment

Whenever I’m in some kind of rut I tend to over do things.

One of the first things I do is to look around for “productivity” tools to organize myself. Tried out Evernote, Tomboy Notes and reQall. Gave up on all of them within a week and went back to what I was doing before - a combination of Google Docs and pen and paper. Nothing works as well as the latter.

Signed up for courses at Coursera - I probably bit off more than I could chew - five courses. I had planned on doing one or two but the courses looked real interesting and I was afraid they wouldn’t be offered again. It was more of a kick in my butt to really try to learn R, Python and NetLogo.

I may end up having to drop a couple of courses. I’d really like to see some courses on Bayesian data analysis and big data.

Does how the EFC is calculated penalize savers

This is probably not a revelation to many people but with K1 approaching the age where we need to start thinking about college, this has been bugging me.

EFC is the expected family contribution calculated by colleges as well as the feds when applying for financial aid for college.

Family A: Household income of past 5 years of $100,000. Hand to mouth consumers who spend on luxury goods and expensive vacations. Savings = 0. Net worth = 0.

Family B: Household income of past 5 years of $100,000. Saves for college. Savings = $100,000. Net worth = $50,000.

All else being equal.

Will Family A’s EFC be the same as Family B’s EFC? True, Family A’s kid might graduate with more debt but it is also likely that they will also qualify for grants so that the net price paid will be lower than Family B.

Websites such as this one make the calculations even more stark.

For Bowdoin college, I used household income of $170,000 with AGI of 120,000 and zeros for almost everything else except primary residence and savings. For Family A I assumed net worth in residence was $500,000 and had savings of $100,000 $10,000. For Family B I assumed net worth in residence of $100,000 and savings of 0. Family A's EFC was about $16,000 per year while Family B's was $6,000.

Update: Found an Atlantic article with the same theme.
Update: I also assumed entering college in Fall with an additional child not yet (but going to be) in college.

Redoxon

One of the supplements that some Penangites swear by is this Vitamin C supplement. It can be found in Penang and Bangkok under the name CDR - Calcium-D Redoxon. I’ve been taking it for the past few months.

I’ve found a close cousin - simply Redoxon - on the Walgreens website. Simply put - they are different - and I’ve come to the conclusion that they are in fact different products marketed under the same name.

The latter is made in the Czech Republic (I was not actually able to find the name of the manufacturer), is yellower rather than orange (almost the color of piss), and effervesces slower and less than the former which is made by Bayer in Indonesia.

Curious with all the lawsuits on trademark and patent infringements that there have not been one in this case.

Malaise

This has been affecting me almost all summer. Will have to try to get back into some posting asap.

Lying heroes

Two years ago K1’s unit of study was ‘Heroes’ and one of the books they read was Greg Mortensen’s Three Cups of Tea. At the end of the school term, it was revealed that almost all of the book was a figment of the author’s hyper imaginative mind. Or did he succumb to all the things that he thought he was?

On page 129, Mortensen quotes Edmund Hillary:
But I’ve learned through the years, as long as you don’t believe all the rubbish about yourself, you can’t come to too much harm.

In retrospect, the fallout from Mortensen’s Central Asia Institute was almost inevitable. The board could not get him to account for anything and his coauthor David Oliver Relin remarked about how difficult it was to work with Mortensen (pg. 229).

At the end of the term the teacher spoke about the CBS ‘60 Minutes’ expose to the class. My sense was that universally the kids felt betrayed although this was not the word they used. The most important lesson I think they learned from this was that “Anybody can lie” and “Don’t believe everything you read”. In may ways I saw this an almost transformative experience as they shifted from 6th to 7th grade that year. And perhaps it’s a good thing to learn early and together as a class that lying is leads to distrust.

The time for arithmetic and poetry is past. Nowadays, my brothers, take your lessons from the Kalashnikov and rocket propelled grenade
- graffiti spray painted on the courtyard wall of the Korphe school.

Subjects and skills

Noah Smith’s post (HT: MR) on what students actually gain from college is a reminder that not all acquired skills are necessarily related to subject matter or academics. His list is the following:

1) Motivation,
2) Perspective, and
3) Human networks

I’m not in full agreement with his analysis except perhaps for #3 but it served as a reminder that in my post that learning classical music seems to take all the fun out of learning music - it’s not necessarily about the music. M claims that learning the notes and to play teachers perseverance and discipline. Someone else claimed that if nothing, all the recitals that one has to go through teaches confidence through public appearances.

Petula Dvorak, Jerry Sandusky and me

I can imagine only standing by and watching - part of the conspiracy of silence. It is easy to think that I would have done the ‘right thing’ but it’s hard for me to know what I would have done.

The article in the New York Times about sexual abuse at the Horace Mann School reminded me of how easy it is to turn away from something that is unfolding right before your eyes. In a reminder that real victim of all kinds of crime is trust, the author has this quote:

“It’s counterintuitive, but sexual abuse emotionally binds the child closer to the person who has harmed him, setting him up for a life plagued by suspicion and confusion, because he will never be sure who he can really trust. And in my experience, this is by far the worst consequence of sexual abuse.”

What would I have done if I had witnessed something inappropriate as some had seen Jerry Sandusky do? Would I have thought - ‘Hey! That’s borderline sexual abuse. I have to stop this guy.’ Or would I have gone the route of Joe Paterno - report it and then assume that I had done my duty.

It was therefore difficult to read about this local crime and ask whether I might have done the right thing if I had been there. Here’s Petula Dvorak:

Geniuses working at the Apple store in Bethesda heard bone-chilling screams, grunts and thuds coming from the Lululemon Athletica shop next door to them one night last March. The manager even got another employee to walk over to the wall and listen for a while, just to assure her that, no, she wasn’t just hearing things.

In case you want to think they demurred, red-faced, after realizing what they’d heard was after-hours loveplay or iron-yoga poses, the Apple store manager testified that unnatural human sounds were accompanied by a woman saying: “God help me. Please help me,” and “Talk to me. Don’t do this.”

Still not sure something bizarre is going on?

The Apple store manager, Jana Svrzo, told police: “I heard someone say, ‘Stop, stop, stop.’ And then, ‘Oh God, stop.’ ”

Hmm. What to do when you hear something like this?
…
If it were the reasonable, civilized society we believe that we occupy, the store employees would call 911 and tell the dispatcher that, maybe they’re being silly, but they are hearing something unusual next door that police might want to check it out.

Instead what they did was nothing. Nothing at all.

The noises on the night of March 11 came from a horrific killing. Svrzo and her co-worker were listening to Jayna Murray, who worked at Lululemon, suffer 322 wounds. The sounds were hammer, knife, wrench, rope and metal bars making contact with a human being.

Or consider this item:

The kidnapping and death of Barbara J. “Bobbie” Bosworth from the Springfield Mall in 2008 was one of the most horrific crimes in this region in recent memory. An innocent woman walking to her car on a Saturday afternoon was abducted at gunpoint, driven to Prince William County, forced into a convenience store to buy beer for her teenage attackers, and then killed when they crashed her car into a tree.
…
Customers in the PDQ Mart in Woodbridge said they pleaded with the store manager to call 911, or let them use his phone to call 911, because Bosworth was clearly in trouble. But during the 14 minutes Bosworth and the two teens were there, the store manager refused. The lawyer for the PDQ Mart did not return a call seeking comment.

What about this? 


A man pulls at a woman’s arm, calling loudly for her to come with him. She says ‘No!’ just as loudly. He tells her to do as he says. They’re both in their 20s or perhaps early 30s. Does a stranger walking by intervene?

I kept on walking.

It’s time to be afraid of not doing the right thing. It’s time to also believe that doing the wrong thing for the right reason is okay. At a time when we are more disconnected than ever from one another it is another reason to be in touch - even for total strangers.

Unfortunately in a society that lacks trust any attempt to do the right thing is met with mistrust - mistrust of motives, or fear of retaliation and lawsuits. This is the kind of society that we live in. Economists and sociologists laud the fact that countries that have the oxymoronic sounding ‘trust-enforcing’ institutions grow faster. But this same institution can turn around and slap you with a lawsuit just as quickly even though you may doing something (wrong?) for the right reason.

What is trust? The lesson is from BSG:
Lt. Sharon 'Athena' Agathon: How do you know? I mean, how do you really know that you can trust me?
Admiral William Adama: I don't. That's what trust is.