Smart Voting Website

Last Tuesday, I voted in the midterm elections. I did it by filling out an absentee ballot in front of a computer at the library. I thought many of my votes were well informed, but frankly, my votes for the less prominent positions were not very well informed at all (I briefly consulted a few web pages), and for some votes I didn't feel informed enough to make any decision at all. This state of affairs is just unacceptable for this country in this age.

Today I got an idea from this post by Scott Adams. Scott says he doesn't vote because he doesn't know enough to make an informed decision. In the future, he thinks there will be a website where people can go to get informed to a sufficient degree, and when that time comes, he looks forward to voting.

I would like to develop a website with a very specific goal. For each election ballot item, there should be a single dynamic page that gives people the info they need to make a decision. It should allow people to quickly pinpoint the differences between the candidates that are relevant to their values. I don't know what that will look like yet, and I will appreciate any ideas other people suggest.

The site should be informative, smart, and unbiased the same way that Wikipedia is -- by fairly presenting input from lots of users. Maybe each voter can enter what their values are, and then the page will be modified to point out differences in stances that similar voters thought were important. One idea for ballot proposition issues is to have polls whose results are weighted by voters' scores on a short knowledge test (basic facts about the propositions).

By the way, I made my first web application last year -- a proof of concept for a new type of social networking site. A demo of RelationCraft is currently online. But I hope my politics site, or a future idea, will be a more practical candidate for wide release.

AIM Profile Dump

I didn't want to make this blog into a link blog, but I come across a lot of interesting stuff on the web, and I usually just post it to my AIM profile. So my AIM profile is becoming a link blog with no archive. Here is today's AIM profile dump.

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Grey's Anatomy is a great show. It had to be said.

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"Don't inter-fucking-rupt!"
Expletive infixation

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"By making misogynistic, racist statements in the friendliest way and asking people to high-five over them, [Borat] gets folks to say things they wouldn't if they knew the film was going to be shown in their own country." --Borat Makes Funny Joke On Idiot Americans

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"They all laughed when I said I wanted to be a comedian. They're not laughing now." --Bob Monkhouse

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Great pickup lines from Weird Al:
You must have fallen from heaven -- that would explain how you messed up your face.
Girl, you'd look like the Venus de Milo if I just cut off your arms.

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HOST: I'm curious, have you ever Googled anybody? Do you use Google?
BUSH: Occasionally. One of the things I've used on the Google is to pull up maps.
Bush Says He Uses The Google

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"If you came from the future, wouldn't you do exactly what Bill Gates did???"

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"The criterion by which we cherry-pick morals from the bible is available to all of us -- religious or not." --Richard Dawkins

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Hey baby,
If I were an endoplasmic reticulum, how would you want me?
Smooth... or ROUGH??

"I wish I were your problem set, because then I'd be really hard and you'd be doing me on the desk."

While arresting a speeding driver, a police man asked this question: "Do you know how fast you were going?!"
The driver replied, "No, because I knew exactly where I was."

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Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain -- and most fools do. --Benjamin Franklin

Me and Richard Dawkins

In the background signing books is renowned scientist Richard Dawkins (I'm in the center foreground). I think Richard Dawkins constitutes the perfect specimen of an intellectual, because he:

1. is brilliant
2. is a gentleman
3. has a great sense of humor
4. has a really crisp British accent

I really admire the guy.

Anchoring

A fascinating psychological phenomenon: Anchoring.

Base

My computer in my dorm is my base. Whenever I'm in my room without having decided exactly what to do next, I get in my computer and see what's up -- email, AIM, Facebook, reddit.com, my Google RSS feed aggregator, and my bittorrent downloads. Even though I'm on the computer more than average, I know most of the people I know have this "base" relationship with their computers.

What I'm wondering is, did people had an analogous base state in their homes before computers became ubiquitous? I guess in the last century it was in front of the TV. Before that, in front of the radio? In the easy chair with a newspaper? At the desk with a pen and paper?

I guess without an incredibly entertaining way to idle, people kind of had to move from one task to another. The "base" thing may be an unprecedented transformation of the American lifestyle.

Queerer Than We Suppose

Here is a video of a brilliant talk by Richard Dawkins entitled "Queerer Than We Suppose: The Strangeness of Science". Very good stuff.

Human Pheromones

I remember my introductory biology textbook said that the existence of human pheromones was still basically a mystery. Now researchers at Penn State claim that fathers emit pheremones that hold off their daughters' sexual maturity!

Read the article - it's pretty fascinating.

Atheism and Morality Revisited

I wrote some quick thoughts on this once, but here's a post that really nails it.

Piano

I've been playing piano for two years. I don't take lessons, I just practice harder and harder pieces, and I'm reading some of the theory as well. I practice regularly and quite a lot. I've consistently put in four hours a week, so by now I've had over 400 hours of practice.



The main thoughts I have about playing piano are:

• It's fun to play good music. I don't know why I can't get the same enjoyment from a good recording that I can from playing it. It seems a little irrational.
• It's really fun, and I have no trouble practicing consistently. I don't exercise nearly as regularly as I'd want to, or even read music theory that much, but I practice plenty. It's cool to have a random skill that's constantly developing like that.
• A lot of the best music I've heard is still too hard for me. Here are some targets I am shooting for in the next few years:
  • Gershwin - Rhapsody in Blue (an advanced piano adaption)
  • Beethoven - Eroica Symphony, 1st movement (piano adaption by Liszt)
  • Chopin - Scherzo in Bb Minor
  • Chopin - Impromptu Fantasie
  • Bach - Well Tempered Clavier Book 2, Prelude #6

Incidentally, I am moving out of my apartment tomorrow, moving out of the bay area on Sept 10, and going back to UCI on Sept 20.

Bush is a Moron

During the 2004 election season, there was this idea that President Bush isn't as dumb as his words, actions and policies. It seemed plausible that Bush's image as an imbecile might be a misleading one.

Today I saw two pieces of evidence that helped me to finally make up my mind:
What a Moronic Presidential Press Conference! (Slate)
Your President, the Visionary Genius (Huffington Post)

I am forced to believe that the man is clearly too stupid to be the president. He is simply unqualified and incompetent. It really is that simple.

Biological Tape Recorder

This bird is an almost perfect biological tape recorder. Amazing.

God Is Imaginary

I must post this link to a new spinoff website by Marshall Brain: God Is Imaginary.

Atheism and Morality

I would like to resolve the seemingly paradoxical phenomenon that atheists are often the most moral people you'll ever meet.

I am an atheist, but I have moral ideals for how society should function. The one I consider most fundamental is the assumption that the same moral ideals should apply to all humans.

Since I want society to function well, I make an effort to embody the same ideals I expect in others. I don't believe there is a "higher" meaning to life, I think we humans create our own. Improving society is a pursuit that I find worthwhile to pursue on this earth, and as a result I feel good about myself when I do my part by being a good person.

One interesting thing to consider is that it's always the religious people who accuse the atheists of not having real morals. But the reality is, when an atheist like me decides to act morally, it is out of pure idealism. When a religious person acts morally, they expect to get a reward from it -- heaven, karma, a better relationship with God, whatever.

So, it is really the atheists who have the upper hand on the morality issue!

Loose grip on reality

If you are not a scientist and you completely disagree with a fundamental theory of modern science, chances are you have what I call a loose grip on reality. I think the epitome of a modern loose-gripper is the young-earth creationist. Let's compare him with his historical analogue.

Yes, it's scary how many parallels you can draw between today's young-earth creationists, and the geocentric nuts of the 1600s. Consider:

1. How do you know the earth revolves around the sun, and not vice versa?


2. How do you know the earth is 4.5 billion years old, and not 6,000?

Which question do you think you can answer better? My guess is that most young-earth creationists have no idea how we know the earth revolves around the sun. And yet, everyone accepts this as fact. Why? Probably because their church gave up on fighting it!

Of course the earth's place in the universe is central to modern astronomy, so to speak. But then again, the earth's age is fundamental to modern geology, paleontology, molecular biology, dendrochronology, genomics, physical anthropology, astronomy, physics and archaeology, amongst other sciences. And that is why I think young-earth creationists have a loose grip on reality.

Visual Basic Self-Replicator

I am reading Introduction to the Theory of Computation. In the chapter about advanced topics in computability theory, it mentioned a technique for building a self-replicating Turing machine (a Turing machine that writes its own description on its tape). I have implemented this basic technique to write a self-replicating program using Visual Basic 6 (a program that outputs its own code). [In the form designer, create one TextBox called Text1 and set its Multiline property to True.]

Private Sub Form_Load(): Text1.Text = "Private Sub X(): Text1.Text = ""Private Sub Form_Load(): Text1.Text = """""" + Replace(Text1.Text, """""""", """""""""""") + """""": X: End Sub"" + vbCrLf + vbCrLf + Text1.Text: End Sub": X: End Sub

Private Sub X(): Text1.Text = "Private Sub Form_Load(): Text1.Text = """ + Replace(Text1.Text, """", """""") + """: X: End Sub" + vbCrLf + vbCrLf + Text1.Text: End Sub

Here is a rough overview of how it works. X() is just a subroutine to take the contents of Text1, and output the code for a Form_Load function that would write those contents to Text1, followed by a blank line, followed by the previous contents of Text1. Form_Load() is the block that executes first. It simply transcribes the code of X() into Text1, then calls X(). I have a hard time keeping this all in my head at once.

This took me an hour to write, and had many more complications than I expected. It was difficult to accurately reproduce the double-quote character (") as it is used in the code. The syntax for escaping the double-quote in a string literal is to write two consecutive double quotes (""). Notice that at one point, I have written twelve consecutive double-quote characters. That was probably the highlight.

Whistling

Here is another dorm observation: a lot of people in my dorm whistle a lot. They whistle loudly and for a long time. But there is no tune! They are whistling musical gibberish. And it's pretty annoying. What the hell?

Quadratic Formula

ax^2 + bx + c = 0
Solve for x.

Obviously, x is equal to the quadratic formula. Can you derive it? Hint: the most important technique is completing the square.

The quadratic formula is fundamental for even the most basic algebra, and it only takes five or ten steps to derive. I think it should be on any high school algebra final exam.

Hair Dryers

I hate hair dryers so much! They make a terribly loud and annoying noise for about two minutes straight, and piss off dorm-mates like me. The point of all that is drying your hair? Are you kidding me? You can dry your hair with a towel. It's fine, really. Why do these things sell? A hair dryer is basically a rube goldberg for drying your hair.

Some asshole in my hall has been drying his or her hair since before I started writing this post. Fucking unbelievable.

Learning can be fun

Look at these fascinating facts about the 1500s.

Two ears and one mouth

"Listening is more important than talking. That is why God has given us two ears and only one mouth."

So what's the alternative, one ear and two mouths? It makes sense that two ears were naturally selected because they allow our brain to triangulate the location of a sound source. There is no significant advantage a second mouth would offer that would compensate for the complexity of maintaining it.

I don't think it should be socially acceptable to spout those stupid cliches about how your anatomy supposedly corresponds to God's will. What kind of a sick joke would that be?