Dowbrigade

Last night at dinner, following the Thursday
Berkman meeting, Dave
was commenting on the exotic culture and social habits of programmers
and software developers. Although he has been hanging out with a
lot of programmers lately, the Dowbrigade is in essence an analog
guy. When those goofy gearheads get going with the digital lingo,
they might as well be Shuar tribespeople speaking the Aguaruna
language
along the banks of the Santiago River in the Upper Amazon Basin.
Actually, the Dowbrigade reports feeling more at home among the Shurar
("People")at times than among the collection of strangely developed developers
he has fallen in with lately.

Be that as it may, we asked Dave, who was waxing rather pessimistic
about the state of the industry, what was happening to the
young genius programmers just coming into the game with their brilliant paridigm-busting
epiphanies and limitless post-adolescent energy.  Immediately several
of the greybeards at the table chimed in, almost in unison, "Myth!"

They all agreed, the popular picture of pimply cyber-punks rewriting
the universe was totally a Hollywood invention. "There’s just so much
you have to know," explained Dave, "All of the best software is written
by experienced developers."

The Dowbrigade was crushed.  How could the Iconic Image of Keneau
Reeves as the (now not-so) young genius programmer saving the universe,
not to mention high schoolers reprogramming Defense Department doomsday
programs, young Einstein realizing relativity, and the brute brilliance
of 20-something programmers churning out millions of lines of code in
twisted 96-hour
bursts
of caffeine and testosterone-fueled creativity, not be true? Once again,
reality was rearing its ugly head.

However, the more we thought about it, the more it made sense. For sure
there is an art and aesthetic to programming that must be refined over
years of observation and experimentation. It sort of reminded the Dowbrigade
of his tennis game. Between sets of a savage match with Jon Raisz,
Brookline architect, topographer, high school running mate, and 35-year-running worthy
opponent on the other side of a tennis net, the following hypothetical
was proposed:

If each of the years we had been playing were represented by a separate
clone of each of us, and the 35 Dowbrigades had a tournament, that is
the 15-year-old Dowbrigade vs. the 38-year-old Dowbrigade in the first
round, etc., which version would emerge the eventual winner?

After august and profound consideration we agreed that the current incarnations
would clearly sweep the aggregated younger versions.  The wiles
and deception, spins and misdirection shots, and the accumulated court
sense honed over the years would more than compensate, we decided, for
any minute loss of strength or stamina. Vain self-deception? Well, like
programming, the proof is in the pudding.  See you on the courts.

Who knew these critters even existed? The Dowbrigade must, however
contest the assertion that they are the only know cold-blooded mammals.
I believe
some
of the girls I dated in college, as well as the vice president, would qualify.
Good news, however, for chronic pain sufferers, although I’d hold onto
my Oxycontin until they work the kinks out of the naked mole-rat treatment.


East African naked mole-rats, the only known cold-blooded mammal, have
shown a rather heated response in lab tests that may have important implications
for treating chronic pain in humans.

The blind, furless creatures that live underground in colonies lack a body
chemical called Substance P, a neurotransmitter normally in the skin that
sends pain signals to the central nervous system. The rats feel no immediate
pain when cut, scraped or subjected to heat stimuli. They only feel some
aches. But when the rats get a shot of Substance P, pain signaling resumes
working as in other mammals.

from
the University of Illinois at Chicago

width=”299″ height=”268″ align=”left”>LONDON — In
what is arguably the oddest scandal to hit the British royal family in
recent years, Prince Charles has denied allegations that he and a male
aide were discovered in bed together by a former butler."

“When George knocked and opened the door of one member of the royal family,
he said he almost froze in shock at the sight before him,” Bryan
Smith, George Smith’s brother, told the Mirror in an article published
Nov. 2. “He said it was completely surreal. The royal and the servant
were tucked up under the sheets, lying next to each other.”

from
the Washington Blade

WASHINGTON (AP) Ancient Americans were changing corn genes through selective
breeding more than 4,000 years ago, according to researchers who
say the modifications produced the large cobs and fat kernels that
make corn one of humanity’s most important foods.

In a study that compared the genes of corn cobs recovered in Mexico and
the southwestern United States, researchers found that three key genetic
variants were systematically enhanced, probably through selective cultivation,
over thousands of years.

"Civilization has been built on genetically modified plants," said
Nina V. Fedoroff of Pennsylvania State University

from
AP News

Or wilder than Howard Dean, at any rate. Talk about jumping the shark!
At this rate John Kerry may be jumping the grand canyon next. It’s a sad
day when action figures become governors and presidential candidates want
to be action figures. Maybe he could jump over an aircraft carrier….


Presidential hopeful Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., makes his entrance by driving
a Harley-Davidson motorcycle onstage to a welcome from "Tonight Show" host
Jay Leno, at right, at NBC studios in Burbank, Calif., Tuesday, Nov. 11,
2003. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon)

from
AP News

Here
is a page I just put together for the class I will teach tomorrow in the Multimedia
lab, called "Ten Things I Bet You Don’t Know About Google".

Of course, all of YOU already know all of these tricks and hidden features,
being Internet mavens and power-users from way back, but my students
are mostly
foreign
MBA candidates, and probably don’t.  If any of you readers are teachers,
feel free to rip off or adapt this page for your own lab sessions….

from my BU web site…..

COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Home to the Vikings of yore, Denmark said Wednesday
it will let a group that worships Thor, Odin and other Norse gods conduct
legally-recognized marriages.

The 240-member Forn Sidr, which worships Odin, Thor, Freya
and the other members of the Norse pantheon, sought recognition in 1999,
said Tissel Jacobsen, the group’s president.

Officially recognized religious communities can marry people
and exempt their members from the 1 percent income tax that is imposed
on members of the state church.

story
from Newsday

Forn Sidr web site

Now
here’s a FlashMob I could get excited about. Even knowing that something
like this COULD happen might breath some life into this moribund phenomena.

Jane’s Addiction performed a surprise "flashmob" gig in central
London.When the band turned up they were greeted by hundreds of likeminded
fans all holding pink balloons.

They played a five song set – Idiots Rule, Suffer Some, Had a Dad, 1%
and My Time – outside the London Transport Museum, before disappearing.

One fan told NME.com: "It was a lot of fun. There was a crowd around
a busker by the transport museum and they had a lot of red balloons,
some with McScandalous written on them.

from
Ananova

This
week, accused D.C. sniper Lee Malvo may become the latest in a string
of criminal defendants to plead not guilty by reason of "The Matrix"

Basically, if even part of your believes that what we perceive of as
reality is merely an elaborate ruse designed to keep mankind in sonabulistic
bondage then any murderous, destructive behavior can be seen as a heroic
quest for liberation and freedom. If the magic of the movies is "willful
suspension of disbelief", what can we do about those who carry that suspension
of disbelief out of the theater and apply it to the real world.

This is actually a variation on the old "I killed my parents because
they were really robots who replaced my real parents and were trying
to kill me" defense (I’ve been tempted by that one a few times myself.)
On the other hand, viewing conventional reality as an elaborate illusion
which must be broken before true enlightenment can be achieved is a staple
of many mystical disciplines as mainstream as Buddhism.

Malvo told FBI agents that they should "watch `The Matrix"’
if they wanted to understand him, and jailers found lines of dialogue from
the film scribbled on paper in his cell. Even the Columbine killers were "Matrix" fans.
He would not be the first to use this line of reasoning.

In May 2000, Vadim Mieseges, a 27-year-old Swiss exchange student and
former mental patient, confessed to skinning and dismembering his landlady
and stashing her torso in a dumpster in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.
The reason, he said, was that she was emitting "evil vibes" and
he was afraid of being "sucked into the Matrix." A judge accepted
his plea of insanity, and the case never went to trial. His preexisting
paranoia, it seems, had turned lethal under assault from crystal meth
and "The Matrix."

More than two years later, on July 27, 2002, 36-year-old bartender Tonda
Lynn Ansley walked up to her landlady, Sherry Lee Corbett, on a street
in Hamilton, Ohio and shot her three times with a handgun. Ansley claimed
that Corbett and three other would-be victims, including Ansley’s husband,
had been controlling her mind and making her have "dreams that I’ve
found out aren’t really dreams." Ansley insisted the murder was justified
because, as she explained in a statement filed with the court, "they
commit a lot of crimes in `the Matrix’ . . . That’s where you go to sleep
at night and they drug you and
take you somewhere else.

from the Boston
Globe