Results matching “philosophy” from Ye Olde Rad Blog III

Have a special treat for you today. Earlier this year I spent my Saturday mornings (8 weeks worth) up at Chapman University, here in Orange county. There I participated in a co-parenting course called » Kids First (.. for a second time, both court-ordered).

The curriculum is designed to help divorced parents put aside their disappointment & resentment and focus on putting their » kids first. (Hence the name.) Excellent course, taught by seasoned professionals who really care. ($300)

My particular classes were held in the same building where Chapman's Philosophy / Religion department is located.

[ The combatants, uh I mean parents, are assigned to different classrooms, as you might expect, to minimize the number of brawls. ]

Posted on the bulletin board outside the office to the Philosophy department was a large laminated poster that contained a list of the major philosophers throughout history, with a representative quote beside each name.

I enjoyed reading those quotes each week .. so much that on the final day I stayed late to copy them down, along with the name of each philosopher and their corresponding dates. I've been carrying around that piece of paper ever since. (Tho it's getting ratty.)

Today I finally transferred these quotes to 3 web pages (7 entries per page), and included a picture for each philosopher (which the original poster did not have). I also added a brief historical description to complement each entry.

Today is the 40th anniversary of the first manned lunar landing (1969) .. a historic event for techies .. cuz it was techies who put us there. And techies used » calculus to put a man on the moon (some 240,000 miles away).

At the heart of calculus lies the notion of » limits (a concept I'm quite familiar with, unfortunately).

Calculus was invented to solve (among other things) the problem associated with finding the instantaneous rate-of-change .. as visualized by the slope of a line tangential to any given point on a curve (of a graph).

To calculate a slope, you might recall (dust off them algebraic brain cells) we pick two representative points, find their difference and divide the » "rise by the run" .. the change-in-Y / change-in-X (.. commonly referred to as "delta-Y over delta-X").

As the change in the X coordinates (recall from basic Algebra) gets smaller and smaller, we get closer and closer to determining the slope (rate-of-change) at a particular point.

The problem however .. is that a point has no size, so the "change" or 'difference' (in the X coordinates) becomes zero. And dividing anything by zero is a major mathematical no-no. (Defined as "undefined" .. a mathematical black hole that will crash your computer.)

See t=13:00 here, and especiaaly t=13:30.

Limits

The concept of » limits was introduced to address this problem. Imagine standing in your living room, and walking half the distance to the furthest wall. Then walk half the distance again. And again & again.

Each time, you keep getting closer & closer. But .. you'll never actually reach the wall (cuz you keep going only half the distance). A hundred years from now, you'll be very, very close (to the wall), but still not quite there.

Getting closer & closer to the wall is analogous to decreasing the size of the difference between the two X coordinates along a curve plotted on a standard graph (which contains an X & Y axis). But the limit (drum-roll, please .. here it comes) is » the wall! .. even tho, in reality, you never actually get there.

That's why the notion of a limit represents a mathemetical "concept" (not reality). If you think about it, you can't really have an instantaneous rate-of-change (.. cuz nothing can change in an instant, cuz an instant contains no time). And the word 'rate' implies "per-unit-something." That 'something can be (and often is) » time.

That's also why the result is called/termed a 'derivative' .. cuz you can't get there with conventional mathematical manipulations. It's kinda like what that old farmer told me down South when I asked for directions » "Son, you can't get there from here." =)

Woke at midnight .. to a disturbing dream. (Didn't get back to sleep 'til 3:30.) Like any artist familiar with affliction, I didn't wanna let good angst go to waste. So I fired up the laptop and resumed my study of the UNIX shell.

Somewhere 'round 2AM I stumbled upon » The Art of Unix Programming (» book at Amazon.com), by Eric Steven Raymond. (Tho I can't recall how I got there.) He's the guy who wrote How to Become a Hacker, which I quote from time to time.

In his treatment of Unix Programming, ESR uses words like culture & philosophy .. which caught my attention .. cuz I've always been fascinated by other cultures .. not so much for the better/worse comparative aspects, but rather for the mind-expanding effect one gets from truly seeing the world from another's perspective. Plus he writes well (or has a good editor), which I appreciate. Couldn't stop reading.

Here are 10 statements/ideas I found particularly interesting and revealing. Perhaps you might also. (Minor Rad editing for brevity.)

• Unix was born in 1969. That's several geologic eras by computer-industry standards -- older than the PC or workstations or microprocessors or even video display terminals.
  
  
• Few software technologies have proved durable enough to evolve strong technical cultures, transmitted across generations of engineers. Unix is one. The Internet is another. Arguably they're one and the same.
  
  
• Unix has supported more computing than all other systems combined. It has found use on a wider variety of machines than any other operating system - from supercomputers to handhelds & embedded networking hardware, through workstations & servers, PCs & minicomputers. In its present avatars as Linux, BSD, MacOS X & a half-dozen other variants, Unix today seems stronger than ever.
  
  
• Unix's durability & adaptability have been astonishing. Other technologies come and go like mayflies. Machines have increased in power a thousandfold, languages have mutated, industry practice has gone through multiple revolutions. Still, Unix hangs in there, producing, paying the bills, and commanding loyalty from the best and brightest software minds on the planet.
  

As promised, here's some photos from my South Afrikaan friend (who lives in Johannesburg). He works in the Film industry down there and loves cool technology.

Seems like he's always traveling to one exotic place or another .. places with exotic names .. like Drakensberg (Afrikaan: Devil's Mountain) and Patagonia. (Yes, I'm jealous.)

Today's photos come from » Moçambique. (I actually had to look on a map to see where that is .. as is the case with most of the photos he sends.)

Moçambique sits on the east coast of Afrika, just above South Africa. It also shares borders with Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi and Tanzania. Off its coast sits the island of Madagascar.

Steve sent 5 pics, with the following note:

Just returned from a weekend escape across the border to Moçambique. Here's some pics from the capital city, Maputo, and surrounding areas.

Jo'burg sits on a high-altitude grassy plain. In comparison to most of Africa, its climate is rather harsh and frigid. Maputo, on the other hand, is further north. It sits right on the coast, and as a result is hot, humid & verdant.

Wandered into the coffee shop one morning this weekend. While searching for a place to plop down and wake up, I noticed a book sitting askew on one of the occupied tables. (I'm always curious to see what others are reading.)

The title jumped out at me » Dark Night of the Soul .. written by a 16th century mystic named St. John of the Cross (San Juan de la Cruz).

Having recent experiences of my own that could be characterized as "dark nightish," I struck up a conversation with this monkish fellow, before asking to join him (.. since there was no place else to sit this busy morning).

He said he'd learned of the book from classmates in college, roomies who had majored in Philosophy. They recommended it after he started to experience "growing pains" a few years into his marriage.

I apologized for chuckling when he told me it was (basically) a woman who drove him into his dark night. But I couldn't help it.

I pressed with questions, seeking a Cliffs Notes style rendering of his book. He said the 'dark night' is actually "a good thing" (another idea which made me chuckle).

During the 'dark night experience' (the theory goes), God removes everything we used to rely on (depend on, trust in) .. "until only He Himself is left." Elements of this explanation rang true with some of my recent experiences.

Received a call this weekend from family back East, notifying me a friend I grew up with had died. The call left me feeling weird, unsettled .. even more than when my parents died.

During a golf tournament (I hear), Patrick's wife tossed him a golf ball, while he was sitting in a golf cart. Reaching for it, he somehow fell out and hit his head.

In a coma, his brain swelled so much that doctors performed surgery to remove part of it. After 20 days, they pulled the plug (seeing they'd removed so much brain tissue). Can you believe it?

What's ironic, is that Patrick was the best catcher of balls I ever knew. He was all-State in high school, and 1st string all-American wide receiver (for class B schools) in college.

He broke (and set) all kinds of pass-receiving records at every school he attended. (Most receptions in a single season, in a career, most TDs, most yardage ... most, most, MOST!)

In high school, his nickname became 'Lance' .. after all-Pro wide-receivers of the day. He had hands like glue.

We grew up in a suburb of New Haven. There were four of us who were very close. Patrick lived across the street. Being so athletic, he's the last (of us 4) anybody would expect to die early.

He wasn't very big, which is probably why he wasn't drafted by the Pro's, but he was super-fast, and would catch any ball he could touch. In all our years of growing up, I only saw him lose one foot-race (to Billy Sullivan, who was 2 or 3 years older) .. and not by much

If you touch it....

Growing up, I often played against him, 1-on-1, with my cousin playing steady-quarterback (for both of us). Now, let me say that, playing against anybody else, I could go out for a long-bomb .. and even with 4 or 5 guys around me, still come down with the ball .. most of the time. But playing against Lance, he'd come down with it every time. "If you touch it," he'd say, "you should catch it." (And he did.)

So you can see how it's especially ironic he died while trying to catch a ball. Perhaps it was this philosophy that caused him to reach farther than he should've.

The fourth is my favorite holiday. Don't know another living soul who prefers it over all others.

Maybe cuz it's the only holiday celebrated outdoors at night. No matter where you might be, summer nights are likely cotton-candy sweet.

Or perhaps, it's the fireworks .. or maybe, the thing we're really celebrating (» freedom, baby!) .. that does it for me.

Had the Bug last night. Braved the crowds and drove down to the Balboa pier .. where we watched the sun set while sharing a root beer float (from Ruby's). He was clearly more interested however, in watching folks fish, and asking to peek in their catch-buckets.

Almost forgot .. June 5th was the site's » 8th anniversary. Happy birthday to Radified.

Was a little distracted at the time. No wonder I missed it. Everything turned out okay, tho. (So we're good to go.)

This is where I usually review the site's origins, philosophy, milestones & future. But I recently revised the About page to include this (+ inject more Rad techno-ego).

Eight is a long time in web-years. We were just getting started back when the dot-com industry was melting-down. Consequently, a small percentage of sites on the web today are older than 8.

This is our first b-day at our new VPS. Maybe someday we'll host on a dedicated web server, or at least a hybrid.

Besides a new web host, this past-year we got an open source version of Movable Type, a new table-less layout for the home page, a new Rad URL (compliments Apache mod_rewrite), and numerous upgrades to the forum (compliments YaBB).