Wednesday  27 Nov 2013           comment?

I wonder if most people's dreams make as much use of allegory as mine do. I've had any number of dreams that cast aspects of my waking life in allegorical form. When this happens, it's usually related to some difficulty I'm dealing with—something that's been weighing on my mind. Such a dream can be helpful just by calling my attention to how much something has been getting to me. Being aware of the fact of preoccupation is often the first step to resolving it.

I wonder if dogs' dreams are allegorical too and I wonder whether they ever decode the symbolism once they wake up.

And maybe dogs watch us while we sleep and wonder why we don't bark when we dream.

Tuesday  26 Nov 2013           comment?

Testimony from last Friday, in a patent infringement trial:

lawyer:	We've heard a good bit in this courtroom about public‑key encryption. Are you familiar with that?
Whitfield Diffie:	Yes, I am.
lawyer:	And how is it that you're familiar with public‑key encryption?
Whitfield Diffie:	I invented it.

The jury reached a verdict today, and I'm disappointed. But I give the losing party (Newegg, the retailer I bought the computer I'm composing this on from) a lot of credit for fighting back. And they intend to appeal.

Monday  25 Nov 2013           comment?

A new cell phone tower was erected in Lone Pine earlier this year, and in a what‑were-they-thinking location: close to an approach path to our airport's runway. Pilots don't like it (to put it mildly). There are several other cell phone towers in town, but they're in sensible locations more than a mile away from the airport. I got interested and read the applicable law. The rules about obstructions near airports specify a bunch of imaginary geometric surfaces near runways that obstructions may not intersect. I did the math, and by my calculations the tower is higher than permitted for its location. I was surprised, though, that it's only a little bit too high. I expected it wouldn't even be close to permissible in such proximity to a runway. Strangely, the FAA had approved the tower. I called my findings to the FAA's attention a few months ago, and I got some news today. Long story; I'll save the details for a future blog posting as things develop. But I hear that the FAA has reëvaluated the tower and their system now agrees with me that it is a penetration (their word) of one of the prohibited surfaces. We'll see what happens next. I'm not sure why I get so interested in this kind of thing, but I do.

Tuesday  19 Nov 2013           1 comment

Gareth Williams, a mathematician who worked for GCHQ, was found dead inside a duffel bag in his bathtub. The bag was locked with a padlock, and Williams had the key with him in the bag.

update: a defector says Russia did it.

From today's NPR interview with espionage historian Nigel West about the Gareth Williams case:

interviewer:	Wouldn't you say that fiction will have fun with this one over the years?
Nigel West:	I think that any self-respecting novelist will completely reject this particular plot as being so bizarre that you really put at risk the suspended disbelief of the reader.

This pic, like most images of my snake that I post, has had the color saturation reduced a little. His color looks artificial if I post them as is (although this may be at least partly due to characteristics of the camera).

Friday  15 Nov 2013           comment?

I don't usually follow chess matches (nor do I have much truck with spectator sports in general), but the current championship (Anand-Carlsen) has my interest.

Time control is more demanding this time than it was in the 1972 Fischer-Spassky match: 40 moves in 2 hours instead of 2½.

And in 1972, computers couldn't beat Fischer or Spassky. Real-time analysis of the match came from masters who weren't as good as the players; now we not only have human analysis but also what various engines tell us.

It's not like playing chess became futile once machines got good at it, but following top-level chess has a different feel than it used to. Maybe, just maybe, computer superiority in chess will spur interest in games like Go and Hex that have combinatorial unwieldiness beyond that of chess. It's not just that humans can take pride in being the top Go and Hex engines on the planet; the complexity of the games allows for richly varied strategies and personal style.

And not that this has anything to do with chess or Go or Hex, but I simply must quote this phone conversation from Tanya Khovanova's Math Blog:

doctor's office:	Are you Tanya Khovanova?
Tanya Khovanova:	Yes.
doctor's office:	You should come here immediately and redo your blood test ASAP.
Tanya Khovanova:	What's going on?
doctor's office:	Your blood count shows that you are dead.
Tanya Khovanova:	If I'm dead, then what's the hurry?

Tuesday  12 Nov 2013           comment?

Friday  08 Nov 2013           2 comments

Thursday  07 Nov 2013           1 comment

I got a CD in the mail today with a fading white speckled pattern printed on the top side in lieu of the usual text. It's a kind of Rorschach test; one viewer wonders if it a was mistake, another sees a pleasing pattern, another deems it a boring substitute for an interesting artistic concept. Me, I saw something to photograph for the blog.

Tuesday  05 Nov 2013           4 comments

Per tradition, Tommyjournal will sport a new look in January, probably including but not limited to a new typeface for the logo at the top of the page. If you have a typeface (or faces) you'd like to suggest, I'd be happy to hear—either in a comment or by email. I can use PostScript or TrueType fonts. Or even if all you have is a PDF document that uses a font you like (where all the letters a,j,l,m,n,o,r,T,u,y appear), I can take it from there.

Monday  04 Nov 2013           comment?

The Scrabble set we had when I was a kid came with a T that marched to a different drummer.

Sunday  03 Nov 2013           1 comment

Today's topic is various forms of artificial scarcity.

The value of a fiat currency depends on its supply. There may not always be consensus on what central bank policy should be at any moment, but there's little dispute that it matters a lot.

Copyright is a can of worms worth several blog postings.

Religious orders that keep secrets—especially those with hierarchies and grades, with more secrets revealed at each level—have all kinds of rationales for their secrecy, most of them beside the point that keeping knowledge scarce is a ploy to make people value it.

The diamond industry in the twentieth century created artificial scarcity of a physical commodity (and created a demand for diamond engagement rings pretty much out of nothing).

Last but not least, I submit that artificial scarcity is essential to the appeal of playing Scrabble. A keyboard lets you type any word you want at any time of day—and that is precisely why typing freely at a keyboard will never, ever give the particular type of satisfaction that accrues from getting the tiles to play a word like obloquy in a game of Scrabble.