Dave’s Archives

Tony Abbott - Mr People Skills himself - is on-message, describing the Rudd government's use of the phrase "temporary deficit" as "Orwellian", on Insiders this morning and elsewhere. One may surmise that Abbott, being entirely honest and reasonable, fears the rise of absolute tyranny and the end of all forms of freedom, with human dignity forever trampled beneath the jackboots of Rudd's front bench. This all begins with the bone-chilling use of political spin by the government, something Abbott would never have contemplated in his entire political career. Nineteen Eighty-Four is indeed right around the corner. And you thought it was just a budget deficit brought on by a recession!

The impending annihilation of liberty aside, Abbott has an intensely irritating manner of speech. He artificially pauses for a split-second every couple of words, as if he's trying to give the impression that he's actually thinking about what he's saying. It's irritating because it completely fails to cover up the sheer inanity of his rhetoric, and in doing so makes it even more inane. That said, I muted the TV after a few seconds, so I suppose it's not that much of a problem.

Apparently one of the world's foremost experts on global warming - as far as the denialist camp is concerned - is Viscount Monckton of Brenchley. The sum total of his qualifications appear to be his propensity to comment on the subject. A google search turned up the Heartland Institute's take on Monckton.

Observe the ad on the left of the page: "Why Does Gore Refuse To Debate His Critics? CLIMATE CHANGE IS NOT A CRISIS". It looks like something straight out of a political campaign, which ought to be enough to toss it aside without further contemplation. But let's contemplate for a second. The ad shows Al Gore's face above four people who - we presume - are "his critics" (one of whom is our esteemed Viscount Monckton). How much tomfoolery can you squeeze into something so small?

1. The one-versus-four theme makes Al Gore look like he's on his own, which couldn't be further from the truth.
2. The ad conjures up images of public debates of the sort that have nothing to do with science. One does not resolve anything, least of all matters of scientific enquiry and public policy, by having proponents of each view point stand up on a stage and hurl sound bites at each other.
3. If anyone did need to be involved in a debate, it would be the hundreds of scientists who contribute to the IPCC's reports, not Al Gore, who is after all just the messenger.

Science. We've heard of it.

A thought occurs, spurred on by my use of Bayesian networks. They're used in AI (so I'm led to believe), though I'm using them to model the comprehension process in humans. However, I do also work in a building filled with other people applying AI techniques.

My question is this: how long until Sarah Connor arrives and blows up level 4? And if she doesn't, does that mean that the machines have already won? Or does it simply mean that we're all horrible failures and that nothing will ever come of AI?

A good friend (you know who you are) is working with and discovering things about ferrofluids. In my naivety, I now find myself wondering if you could incorporate some kind of neural structure into it, and get it to reform itself at will...

I came home from a dinner with the rellies to find that the daylight savings referendum had been defeated, which was mildly disappointing but hardly surprising. There'll be another referendum in a while. At least I remembered to vote this time.

However, I am surprised and intrigued that the Greens candidate Adele Carles managed to pull off a convincing victory in the Fremantle by-election - 54% to Labor's 46% two-candidate-preferred vote (with 79% of votes counted). The Libs seem not to have bothered to field a candidate, but I suspect they'd be satisfied with a Labor defeat. Even though the Greens are even more ideologically opposed to the Libs than Labor, they might create complications for the formation of a future Labor government.

Apologies to non-geeks. The following Java code determines whether infinity is even or odd. It compiles, runs, finishes immediately, and outputs "false" (meaning that infinity is odd).

class Infinity \u007b static \u0062\u006f\u006f\u006c\u0065\u0061\u006e\u0020\u0065\u0076\u0065\u006e\u003b static
{
    // Configure infinite speed
    System.nanoTime(\u002f\u002a);
    boolean even = true;
    double i = 0.0;
    while(i <= infinity)
    {
        even = !even;
        i += 1.0;
    }
    System.normalTime(\u002a\u002f);
    System.out.println("Infinity is even: " + even);
    System.exit(0);\u007d
}

Yes, it's all smoke and mirrors, but I've been having fun with it.

You may recall previous rants about my theoretical framework. The recent evolution of my thought processes (much like all other times) has been something like this: hurrah, done... except... [ponder]... I should see if I can fix this little problem... [ponder]... How the hell is this supposed to work?... [ponder]... Damn, the library doesn't have any books on that... [ponder]...  Gah, I'll never finish this.

This all concerns the enormous equation slowly materialising in Chapter 7 of my thesis - the one that calculates the "cost effectiveness" of a software inspection. It used to be finished. I distinctly recall finishing it several times, in fact.

The equation was always long, but it used to contain relatively simple concepts like no. defects detected × average defect cost. Then I decided in a state of mild insanity that it would be much better if I had matrix multiplication in there. Then I decided that this wasn't good enough either, and that what I really needed were some good solid Bayesian networks (often discussed in the context of artificial intelligence). I only just talked myself down from using continuous-time Bayesian networks, because - though I like learning about these things - at some point I'd like to finish my thesis and have a life.

(Put simply, Bayesian networks are a great way of working out probabilities when there are complex causal relationships, and you have limited knowledge. They also allow you to insert pretty diagrams into an otherwise swampy expanse of hard maths.)

On the up side, I've learnt what 2^S means, where S is a set, and that there's such a thing as product integration (as opposed to the normal area-under-the-curve "summation" integration). It's all happening here.