In memoriam

Well, I guess I might as well be the one to post the obituary notice — Dr. Edward Teller, the father of the Hydrogen Bomb, prominent physicist of several disciplines, general political lunatic, and the model (I can say this now that I know he won’t overhear and come after me with sharp objects for it) for Dr. Strangelove in all too many ways — passed away yesterday at the age of 95 at his home on Stanford campus.

The world just won’t be the same without him. Doctor Teller, for all that you were a madman, you were one of the most interesting madmen I’ve met.

Published in: on September 10, 2003 at 00:37  Comments (4)  
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Furniture

I am now the proud owner of a sofa.

w00t.

Published in: on September 5, 2003 at 12:42  Comments (4)  

Protected: Music, anyone?

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Published in: on August 31, 2003 at 17:52  Enter your password to view comments.  

Quick politics notes

[politics filter]

Last notes before heading out to Seattle. Headlines for today given here, behind a cut tag – these are from Debka, but they’re over quite a few other sources as well. Casualties from the strike in Iraq are currently listed as 95 dead, 140 wounded. (that number from the NY Times)

Get ready, here comes more fun.

Headlines

Published in: on August 29, 2003 at 16:28  Comments Off on Quick politics notes  
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Just when you thought the world was getting a little too sane…

First, the politics part:

Latest news, compliments of the New York Times: The Israeli government has decided to open the temple mount to the general public, Jews, Christians and Muslims. (This is a change from the current de facto situation, where the Muslim waqf that runs the mosque basically controls access to the mount itself) Basically, it’s setting the place up as a tinderbox, apparently on the theory that the area doesn’t have enough of them. Both sides starting to act like they usually do in the vicinity of the heart of the old city, namely like frightening madmen; most of you have probably heard me try to explain this before.

(Actually, it’s more likely on the theory that establishing a status quo on the ground counts for everything in Middle Eastern politics, which is actually a pretty accurate theory, although it tends to only be applied to things that are likely to lead to bloodshed)

Second, an amusing side note

Published in: on August 28, 2003 at 22:32  Comments (4)  
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What the fuck…?

From a CERT advisory I received today (CA-2003-22, “Multiple vulnerabilities in Microsoft Internet Explorer”):

VU#548964 – Microsoft Windows BR549.DLL ActiveX control contains
vulnerability

The Microsoft Windows BR549.DLL ActiveX control, which provides
support for the Windows Reporting Tool, contains an unknown
vulnerability. The impact of this vulnerability is not known.

Could someone please explain to me what the hell this sort of report is supposed to mean? I mean, was this vulnerability discovered by consulting the Delphic oracles? Or has CERT decided that, in the present legal climate, they can only inform the world of critical bugs by means of gnomic utterances and vague allusions?

I can just see now where this is heading… two years from now, I’ll be getting this —

VU#xxxxxx – Software is all perfectly fine!

There has been a rumor that a certain piece of software has
a minute imperfection. Please do not listen to this at all, nudge
nudge, wink wink. There is no impact to this at all, and you should
not be in any way worried that it could allow an attacker to execute
arbitrary code on ***** systems with the privileges of the root user.
Have a nice day!

Published in: on August 26, 2003 at 15:13  Comments (5)  
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Fsck.

Another article

You probably don’t want to read this one. Those of you who prefer to avoid politics almost definitely don’t want to. If there’s anyone who does – it’s about the work of dealing with the aftermath of yesterday’s attack in Jerusalem, and in particular how hospitals and families are coping with the large number of children among the casualties.

Not quite sure why I’m posting this. It’s not exactly a happy-making thing. Just something that’s on my mind a lot this past day.

(Side note, in response to something musae said yesterday: “getting used to it” involves very little numbing of the emotional responses, unless you really want to numb them. Some people do. It’s more about being good at dealing with them and getting on with one’s life and the tasks at hand. I have no idea how social workers and ER doctors handle it. They have my deepest respect.)

Published in: on August 20, 2003 at 22:41  Comments (1)  
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Dammit.

(the latest)

Every time, I think I’m going to be used to it, but it still makes me feel so damned angry, and so damned hopeless, and sad, and frustrated, every time.

Are we going to be doing this for the rest of our lives? For the rest of history?

Doesn’t anyone have anything better to do than kill people?

Published in: on August 19, 2003 at 13:33  Comments Off on Dammit.  
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Notes

(Mostly notes to self)

Two interesting short papers today by Wung-Hong Huang. hep-th/0308094 is a short proof that if SUSY is unbroken at the classical level, then it can’t be broken at any level of perturbation theory, even if all the gauge symmetries are broken. Not an unexpected result, but it’s kinda stark – just more evidence of how powerful a symmetry SUSY really is. Need to think a bit about this issue, and what it means for SUSY breaking in the universe.

hep-th/0308095 is an analysis of the statistical mechanics of systems that allow boson-fermion transmuting processes. I need to think a bit about his result – there’s at least one subtle step there – but if it’s correct, then this would be a nice way to think about the stat mech of a supersymmetric gas. (To do: Figure out what the value to his α parameter would be for a given gas, say shydrogen.) I’m not sure if this is good for anything, but (a) imagining what the universe would look like if it were supersymmetric is fun, and (b) this seems like it might have some unexpected uses later, if nothing else in getting a solid feel for some weird kinds of statistical systems.

Published in: on August 14, 2003 at 18:58  Comments (6)  
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Rgh…

For the record: C++ has about half an ass worth of support for actual object-oriented behavior.

I miss Objective-C.

Published in: on August 13, 2003 at 10:39  Comments (8)  
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