Letter

I wrote a letter to my high school English teacher Sunday night.

I then had a dream about being back in high school. What do you know?

Nearly equal sums problem

My friend who visited Monday once posed this problem (she no longer needs the answer).

There are r regions R_1, R_2, R_3, R_4, ... R_i ... R_r. Each region has two properties (or "attributes"), A and B, which are integer values -- perhaps A(R_1)=5. We are given a complete list of A(R_i) and B(R_i) for each i, for a total of 2r integer values. There might not be any discernible pattern here, but we get a complete table.

Now, we want to divide these regions into g non-overlapping groups so that "each group has about the same total for A values" and "each group has about the same total for B values".

There are several possible definitions for these criteria. If you pick your favorite definition of what the goal means, can you give a good non-brute-force way to form groups?

I think I asked about this on Advogato at one point.

I never figured out a really useful answer, even though I did describe some possible clarifications of "each group has about the same total". Again, my friend no longer needs a solution to this problem, but I'd still like to solve it.

Human rights

I was interested to note that the only posters in the little station were ones informing travelers that they had Human Rights. That was all. It intrigues me to think that there might be someone going through the border who is confused and thinks that, perhaps, he does not have human rights and needs a poster to tell him otherwise.

(Helen spends fall break at the Namibian border)

Amusing

"We are very legitimate, all of us were elected."

Lest anyone doubt

that George W. Bush is a conservative: via Politech Monday morning.

From TLJ:

4/20. President Bush announced his intent to nominate Robert Flores to be Administrator of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP). Flores is currently the VP and Senior Counsel for the National Law Center for Children and Families. He also served on the COPA Commission. He is one of the leading proponents of prosecuting obscenity on the Internet, and requiring schools and libraries receiving e-rate subsidies to use filtering technology. However, the OJJDP is not a prosecutorial office; it collects and disseminates information, and provides grants and other assistant to state and local authorities. It also has no authority regarding the e-rate.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/04/20010420-1.html

That national law center should really be called the National Law Center Against Pornography, because that's what they do. For example, they were one of the recent amici supporting the idea that realistic depictions of children having sex should be illegal. This is a contentious legal issue now before the Supreme Court, because of course some people can draw sexually explicit depictions of children, or create them with computer animation software, without any actual children being involved. (Search for Free Speech Coalition et al. v. Reno and you can find some material on the current case. This is different from ACLU v. Reno.)

Thus civil liberties advocates say "thought crime" and the National Law Center and others say "the elimination of one more obstacle in the prevention of child pornography".

I think many civil libertarians have gotten this idea from mathematics about epsilon-delta proofs of limits and thought that you could have a moral bounding box around an act. If the bounding box can be made as small as you like while still containing the act, and then if it contains only the actor (some say: and other consenting parties) (some say: and the actor's property), the act will be legitimate.

There is this fascination with "the privacy of one's own room" (for example, oral and anal intercourse are still illegal in many states and the U.S. Supreme Court approved of state laws with this effect, because it didn't agree with "the privacy of one's own room" argument). I think that's the most common kind of mental moral bounding box: this act was bounded in the most private place (this side of the grave, Emily Dickinson fans) with consenting parties and perhaps left no traces afterward, yet the court did not protect it. How could that be?

Monday evening

I went to a rehearsal of a musical improv at Mills College in Oakland. It was very good; in some parts, it was very funny.

After this, we went to a crepe place on College Avenue near the Rockridge BART. I suppose I could have tried to meet Nick around there to cash a check, but it didn't even occur to me until I got home. At the crepe place, we had a very nice time with much merriment. It reminded me of good times around dinner tables with friends back in high school. (In case anyone reading this doesn't already know, I have a wonderful high school experience.)

In between Mills and College Avenue, we crossed Broadway and I immediately thought of exactly what I had been saying the last time I crossed that particular intersection (a few blocks south of College and Broadway), more than a year ago. Spatialization of memories? Method of loci? Or just the strength of memories themselves?

The people I was with were really interesting.

Worker's Comp

I worked on some paperwork for my Worker's Comp claim.

I feel all better from my cold, no longer sick at all, but I still feel funny in my nose and throat. (Curtis says symptoms from a cold will last longer than the pathogens themselves that provoked them.)

I don't want to go to the chiropractor until I feel completely well (and some people would say: then there would be no need for you to go to the chiropractor).

Dreams

I had several dreams Monday night, but I don't remember them.

Very amusing

The Oracle says: Paul Erdos has a Bacon number of 4.

(Don Marti)

BBC

I'm experimenting with some things, like trying to compare the size of a cramfs with the size of a cloop-compressed ext2fs. On reflection, I think cramfs is going to win.

Drugs

I may go to the drug policy debate in Berkeley tonight. The president of Students for a Sensible Drug Policy is debating Kevin Sabet. If you don't know who Kevin Sabet is, and you don't have a bunch of back issues of the Daily Cal lying around to look up his letters to the editor, try a Google search for "Kevin Sabet".