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THE VIEW FROM CHAOS MANOR

Wednesday, May 14, 2003

12:49 PM

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Ethnomath

This is a day book. It's not all that well edited. I try to keep this up daily, but sometimes I can't. I'll keep trying. See also the monthly COMPUTING AT CHAOS MANOR column, 4,000 - 7,000 words, depending. (Older columns here.) For more on what this page is about, please go to the VIEW PAGE. If you have never read the explanatory material on that page, please do so. If you got here through a link that didn't take you to the front page of this site, click here for a better explanation of what we're trying to do here.

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If you want to PAY FOR THIS there are problems, but I keep the latest HERE. I'm trying. MY THANKS to all of you who sent money. Some of you went to a lot of trouble to send money from overseas. Thank you! There are also some new payment methods. I am preparing a special (electronic) mailing to all those who paid: there will be a couple of these. I am also toying with the notion of a subscriber section of the page. LET ME KNOW your thoughts.
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Monday February 24, 2003

As usual there was a lot of activity in both Mail and View over the weekend. I'll have some new observations after I do some work today...

A WARNING:

Subject: lovgate.c spreading

http://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/virusencyclo/default5.asp?
VName=WORM_LOVGATE.C&VSect=T

http://www.pandasoftware.com/virus_info/
encyclopedia/overview.aspx?idvirus=38875
-- ------- Roland Dobbins

I had occasion to use this over in mail, and it seemed a shame to waste it. We learned this along with other useful information such as 340 lights...

"From the Far East I send you one single thought, one sole idea -- written in red on every beachhead from Australia to Tokyo -- "There is no substitute for victory!" Douglas MacArthur

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Tuesday, February 25, 2003

Someone recently asked about the origin of the description of DC/X as "landing on a tail of fire the way God and Robert Heinlein intended rockets should land."

Although I've used that often, it's a case similar to the time when someone at dinner said something clever, Oscar Wilde said "I wish I'd said that," and someone else said "Don't worry, Oscar, by tomorrow you will have." The origin is Dr. Arlan Andrews...

We are opening a new discussion of Digital Rights Management over in Mail.

And then there is "ethnomath" which I never heard of until it came up over in the discussion group I haunt.

Ethnomath is non-answers, rather than wrong answers. At Renssaeler Polytechnic, founded on Dutch mathematics, no doubt, they have a website that explains it all, and also links to critiques of Ethnomathematics, by John Leo, and Senator Byrd. Senator Byrd claims, in this speech, to have actually read the mathematics textbook he cites.

According to John Leo, "[an Arizona mathematics textbook ] includes Maya Angelou's poetry, pictures of President Clinton and Mali wood carvings, lectures on what environmental sinners we all are and photos of students with names such as Tatuk and Esteban who offer my daughter thoughts on life. It also contains praise for the wife of Pythagoras, father of the Pythagorean theorem, and asks students such mathematical brain teasers as What role should zoos play in our society? However, equations don't show up until Page 165, and the first solution of a linear equation, which comes on Page 218, is reached by guessing and checking."

(I don't yet have permission to give the name of the person giving this information but I have no reason to doubt a word of it.)

If this is the diversity sought in our Universities, I think I prefer monotony.

The following is worth reading:

http://mathematicallycorrect.com/johnleo.htm

And we have this:

Subject: Iraq paying to murder US Troops

Dr. Pournelle -

More reasons to deal with Iraq.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/forms/login.html?url=%2
Feditorial%2Ffeature.html%3Fid%3D110003121&msg
=&uname=

Ray Rayburn

I have not changed my views: that man is too stupid to be allowed command of that many resources. Sure, he's clever; but wily and clever don't preclude being too stupid to be deterred.

AND THIS FROM ERIC POBIRS:

This is incredibly despicable. Any teacher who can proven to have done such a thing should be immediately fired.

http://windsofchange.net/archives/003102.html

Despicable is too mild a word.

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Wednesday, February 26, 2003

We had a major change in the way things are done here, and lost today's view (forever I fear) as a result: I hadn't sent some of the material up to the web before Bob Thompson did his magic. I don't think I'll try to reconstruct it. It was I think mostly pointers to things in mail anyway, although I have the nagging suspicion that there was one substantive comment.

I wrote a couple of thousand words of Burning Tower yesterday (today, I'm writing this Thursday morning, but it's posted on the Wednesday slot, so what is "today" and is that a philosophical question and O to Hell with it)...

Anyway, from now on, you can link to a bookmark and not worry that it will change at the weekly rollover. Currentmail and Currentview are merely redirectors to the permanent number of the current page. We'll see how it works, but it ought to work just fine.

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Thursday, February 27, 2003

See above for a sort of explanation of how we're doing things now, and why Wednesday's View was written this morning.

I had some thoughts at the breakfast table, but they seem to have gone away, so they can't be too important. I still owe you an essay on the varieties of American Conservatism, but it's turning out to be more complex than I thought it would be. And I am advancing on the Burning Tower front...

In toying around with Google I found

http://www.math.nyu.edu/phd_students/
campbelm/stuff/mywords/dante.html

which is an interesting commentary from someone who thinks she knows all about me from reading only the collaborations with Niven. And who doesn't seem to have heard of C.S. Lewis and The Great Divorce. Still in all it's interesting that someone would spend that much time writing about Inferno.

John Strohm says you have to see this:

The United Kingdom has put what looks like Small Claims Court on the World-Wide Web.

https://www.moneyclaim.gov.uk

Apparently, you can file your claim, or respond to a claim filed against you, online.

I eagerly await comments.

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Friday, February 28, 2003

I am working on my essay on varieties of American Conservatism.

There is a big meeting this weekend on privatization of space. I doubt much will come of it, but you never know.

And it's finally true:

From: Stephen M. St. Onge saintonge@hotmail.com

Date: 2.28/03 subject: sad news

Dear Jerry:

http://www.msnbc.com/news/877768.asp?0cv=CB20

Best, Stephen

DELENDAM ESSE SAUDI ARABIA!

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Saturday, March 1, 2003

Well Dennis Tito hosted a big space meeting today. We'll see if much comes of it. The horrifying part to me is that we can't, today, do some of the things we could do back in 1988, not without some preliminary projects to teach the new engineers how things are done.

But I am a firm believer in the principle that what man has done, man can aspire to.

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Sunday, March 2, 2003

I am missing the second day of the "space summit". I make no doubt that others will fill in for me.

Read all of the next before you comment:

I am increasingly annoyed with Windows XP: the search function says it will never look in hidden files and folders; there appears to be no way to tell it I WANT it to look at ALL folders. In my case I am trying to understand just what Outlook does with its PST and other files. But of course you can't do that, because search won't FIND all the PST files; it acts as if there are none about half the time because outlook puts things in hidden folders, which search won't look into.

I suppose I need to get a commercial or third party search program, since Microsoft has decided to cripple the one that comes with the operating system. Another case of innovation and adding value?

Help "search hidden folders" only tells me how to hide folders, which I don't do to begin with. I have no hidden folders, but that don't matter, Search treats some as hidden anyway.

A google search shows a discussion that says Search looks in hidden folders by default, but in fact it does not and says it does not.

All right, I found it. You have to do a search, let it fail, then you can fool around and find the way to tell it to search hidden folders. By default it does NOT do that. And it steadfastly won't tell you how to set that option in any part of HELP I can find. Ugh.

WARNING:

I do NOT send "greeting cards." A reader has inquired about a "greeting card" purportedly sent by me; in theory you can go open the greeting card at some web address. I advise you NOT to open any "greeting card" purportedly sent by me. I have NOT sent any greeting cards.

Well, I am in San Diego at the beach house, after considerable adventure. I took the train. Just after the last stop someone jumped in front of the train. We then stayed there for a couple of hours. It wasn't quite a wreck, but it sure took time and no one was telling us what was going on. Oh well.

The Big Space Meeting may or may or may not end up with a statement. I am not enormously hopeful about what that statement will say. But perhaps it will be useful.

My own view is that we have a president who wants SDI, and a nation that needs to protect its space assets to stay militarily dominant. Feeding NASA won't help. We have a chance to get the Air Force and Navy competing for space assets and capabilities, and a need to get them doing it.

I don't hear too many people saying that.

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