carlo angiuli (blog)

Which week? Does my reign end today? Or tomorrow? Or next Saturday?

At seven this morning, I walk into the school, and upon walking into the rotunda, I hear some music quite distinctly. I recognize it: it’s Fortune Faded by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Pretty memorable intro.

All the time I can hear music from other people’s iPods. Why does everyone play music so loudly? Then I realize that nobody is around me. Where can the music be coming from? I can’t hear the vocals, but the electric guitar’s very clear.

Oh. It’s coming from that guy’s earbuds. That guy who’s sitting on the floor fifteen feet away from me.

Weirdest day ever.

Okay, I have some things to ask of you guys. In order of priority:

I am thinking of entering the New Trier Science Research Competition, perhaps both as an individual and team. If you would like to work with me on a team project, please get in touch with me, preferably with some ideas. I’m thinking these would likely be in the chemistry, mathematics, or computer science categories, because I’m probably not interested in your research project that requires me to cross-pollinate three thousand pea plants. Feel free, however, to propose any reasonable or unreasonable ideas for which you would like to collaborate with me. Surprise me.

I am thinking of writing AP study guides, particularly for Biology and Chemistry, and perhaps also for Physics C and Calculus AB and BC. They would be available online for a fee, and include a lot of helpful, detailed review information, unlike commercially-available AP review books, which have astonishingly little useful course content. (They do, however, suggest that you eat a good breakfast that morning.) Give me any input you have about this idea, especially how much you or others would be willing to pay. Remember that my first-year Chemistry review packet was ten pages for third quarter alone; these AP guides would be easily over 40 dense pages. I would probably only be able to finish one or two of them this year.

If you are interested in joining Scholastic Bowl and you are not on the mailing list, contact myself or David Reinstein now. Our first official practice is Wednesday in room 359.

Probably for Patrick only: If you help me get dvipng to work on my website, I will set up an online TeX rendering service with indefinite storage. You want me to do this.

If you are in Aegis Questions, write questions now.

If you have the 2.6.17 Linux kernel, I would like you to compile a few kernel modules for me. Alternatively, tell me how I can get them to compile on Knoppix 5.0.1, as it does not contain all the necessary C include files.

That is all. I hope to hear from some of you, especially about the science project and AP guides. If you read my blog but haven’t commented, now is a great time to start.

I overheard the following conversation on the bus today after school. I swear that it was just like this–I haven’t embellished anything or made anything up. I tried to memorize it as exactly as possible because I wouldn’t hear many things like it ever again. Hopefully. The conversation stands on its own, though I would like to add one comment: these two people are going to join the American electorate.

[the conversation hasn't caught my attention yet]
Male: “You are SO Jewish!”
Female: “I’m Christian.”
“Wait, really? Anyway, you’re still so Jew-ish. You get it?”
“Ha ha.”
“Y’know, like ‘This thing is bluish,’ y’know.”
“Yeah, I got it.”
“So it’s like, Jew-ish. You’re so totally Jew-ish.”
“Yeah. I get it. Very funny.”
“Oh hey, can I drink some of your water?”
“Well, okay, but it’s warm, you won’t want it.”
“No, I love warm water!”
“Eww, it’s so disgusting.”
“No, it’s great! And it’s good for you too.”
“Wait, really?”
“Yeah, it is.”
“Why?”
“Well, have you taken bio yet?”
“Yeah, I took it last year.”
“Oh okay, so you know how body temperature is like 98.6 degrees, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Our body can’t use water if it’s below 98.6 degrees. So we need to use energy to warm it up if we drink cold water.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. So if we drink warm water, it’s more healthy for us. I love water when it’s hot, but not scalding or anything.”
[At this point, I want to interject that the claim about water is completely bogus, and besides, room temperature is a lot closer to 98.6 degrees than hot water is. I refrain to see what happens.]
“Wow, I never knew that.”
“Yeah, it’s true.”
“Y’know, I hate Dasani. I opened it once and it fizzed when I opened it, and I was like, ‘What? This isn’t supposed to have carbonation.’ This is stupid. And it’s like so salty.”
“Yeah. I love Fiji water though.”
“It’s really expensive.”
“Yeah, but you can, like, taste the Fiji in it. It’s really good. Oh, have you ever had dry water?”
“What?”
“Well, you know how like, wine makes your mouth dry after you have it? Well, there’s like dry water, it makes your mouth dry afterwards.”
“Really? That’s so cool.”

There was absolutely no sarcasm in the conversation, either. At this point, my head was starting to hurt, and I tuned out. Besides, the conversation turned to a discussion of racial topics, and I decided I wasn’t all that interested in hearing what this budding scientist had to say about politics.

Monday Mathematics #2. Because .9 repeating really does equal 1.

After Facebook implemented news feeds announcing everyone’s actions on Facebook, a big fiasco broke out, and groups were formed left and right to protest it. Soon everyone’s news feed read something like

20 of your friends have joined “I HATE THE NEWS FEEDS!”
8 of your friends have joined “The New Facebook Really Sucks”
34 of your friends have joined “Bring Back the Old Facebook!”

Kudos to Andy Frukacz from Loyola, my only friend who thought to exploit this feature. All of his friends logged onto Facebook to see something like the following in their news feeds:

11:20 PM: Andy is single.
9:50 PM: Andy is in a relationship and it’s complicated.
9:00 PM: Andy is married.
7:30 PM: Andy is engaged.
6:45 PM: Andy is in an open relationship.
6:30 PM: Andy is in a relationship.

(It kept going.) Andy Frukacz, I salute you.

So Mark Zuckerberg quickly wrote a note to the community explaining that the news feed information was already available, and it was simply aggregating it into an accessible format. I understand this, but the information isn’t actually available–it would require crawling every page on Facebook continuously to monitor when it was changed.

I wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about the news feeds, but I wasn’t as incensed as a lot of other people were. So I silently joined the largest protest group, and thought no more of the matter.

Facebook decided they had made a big mistake (their online suggestion box was likely suffering from integer overflow by this time) and apologized. So they added privacy controls specific to the news feeds. I turned off the feed timestamps, and figured nobody actually cared about what I did anyway, so I left everything else on.

The obvious question is, did anyone win? Luckily, the big protest group was run by an intelligent member who concluded that no “winning” was involved. I agree.

If everyone using your service dislikes your new feature, you have to make adjustments. Ideally, you have a focus group that tells you not to include it in the first place, but Facebook isn’t a huge software corporation–in fact, they don’t even make software. They provide a service. That’s the Web 2.0 movement, I guess: replacing software with services.

It’s not democracy, it’s common sense. Mark stuck by his position until he realized that the protest just kept getting larger. Even afterwards, the feature wasn’t rolled back: it was only mitigated by privacy controls.

In fact, democracy itself is necessarily a sham. It assumes that everyone is equally capable of contribution, which is far from the truth. Yes, I am Very Liberal (as the Facebook option calls it) but not because I think that everyone’s opinion is equally valid. In fact, depending on your definition of liberal and conservative, I might be Very Conservative instead.

Why? Because I think the ideal government wouldn’t have to worry about getting elected the next term. Good politicians always have to pervert their actions so that the people like them, often at the cost of things beneficial for the public. Republicans have been completely ignoring the truth to get as much of the public behind them as possible–which is exactly why they’re doing so well. Democrats listen to experts, listen to advisers, think ahead about the future…but the public doesn’t care. They just want a “strong” government that doesn’t take crap from other people, and if somebody attacks us in our homeland, by God let’s go and pay them back. Doesn’t matter if it’s a bad idea: the people will like it.

But that’s a whole other topic for another day. I’ll have to continue this later.

Flame away.

I think Labor Day is a good time for the first issue of Monday Mathematics. The BC class is going to begin delta-epsilon, math team is going to start. Everything is timed so well.

This week’s issue is my thoughts on how to approach math, as an introduction to the series. Don’t worry, the next one will actually have math. But read this one too: it’s probably the most important. Because I know you sorts of people are responsible for the parabola shenanigans. I’d be interested to hear what anybody thinks, or still, any ideas people have for future issues.

Writing scobol questions, reading Wikipedia, sipping green tea, and listening to music. What a nice productive morning. Maybe I’ll even get to the work I’m supposed to be doing.

To Nick: The Fray are good. Catchy but not stupid.