Assorted Math & Technology News

When I started studying at the University of Waterloo's Faculty of Mathematics, Comptuer Science was a (very large) department. About halfway through my studies, it became the School of Computer Science. I read a couple days ago that David Cheriton, an alumnus and professor at Stanford donated $25 million to the School so the University renamed it to become the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science. (How does a university professor become a multimillioniare you ask? They finance Google in 1998 with $200 thousand in seed money, which is, of course, the definition of ROI).

I heard from my Mom that the Ontario Government is planning on dropping Calculus from it's high school curriculum. That's not very wise.

Lastly, The New Yorker has an interesting article, Blackberry Picking, about patents. In particular, it addressed the RIM v. NTP proceedings. It's concise and very well written. It's worth reading.

Lost

I finished watching disc one of Lost (which contained the pilot and the next two episodes, Tabula Rasa and Walkabout). I was impressed with all three shows. They have good pace, lots of intrigue and suspense. There are a lot of characters, but they devote a lot of time on building up their stories (and do a good job at it), which adds more layers to the show. I'm looking forward to getting the rest of the discs and watching them. (With seven discs, it might take me a while to watch all of season one. however).

Narnia

I saw The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe last night with Nabeel and a couple of his friends. I was disappointed. The characters were shallow. The story was shallow and predictable. The whole movie was style over substance and it's style wasn't even that original. (Granted, the animated animals were impressive).

Seattle's public transit is also disappointing. I had to wait 30 minutes for a bus home and it was the last bus ever going that way. (I was going from downtown proper to the edge of downtown were I live at 12.40 am. So I think it reasonable to expect some bus service). Sometimes I think Seattle has got to have one of the lamest nightlifes around for a major city.

More Movies

I liked Collateral. Jamie Foxx is a LA taxi driver who has the misfortune of picking up an assassin, Tom Cruise, for a fare. It had a good story, good pace, and interesting characters. Four stars.

In The Recruit, Colin Farrell is recruited into the CIA by Al Pacino. The story is a little weak and Hollywoodified, but the characters are okay and the thriller has enough action and twists-and-turns in the plot to keep you entertained. So I'll be generous and say four stars too.

Monster's Ball is the kind of movie that makes the Oscars confusing. Billy Bob Thornton and Halle Barry put on good performances and I like the implemention (e.g. cinematography), but the story is just plain boring. Hence, only one star.

Disc one from season one of Lost is suppose to arrive from Netflix today. I've never watched a TV show on DVD before(*) and a lot of things have been said about Lost. Hopefully it is as good as they say.

(*) Slight lie: I watched three Seinfeld episodes last year.

Climate Change

Kyoto accord won't hurt economies: Clinton [CTV]:
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...the U.S. isn't one of the 157 countries that have signed onto the Kyoto accord...

But Clinton encouraged the delegates to press on.

"There's no longer any serious doubt that climate change is real, accelerating and caused by human activities. We are uncertain about how deep and time of arrival of the consequences, but we are quite clear that they will not be good," said Clinton.

He put down the main U.S. fear about Kyoto -- that it would hurt the economy by chaining it to greenhouse gas reductions that were not achievable.

That claim, he said, "was flat wrong."

"And we know with every passing year we get more and more objective data (that) if we had a serious disciplined effort to apply on a large-scale, existing clean energy and energy conservation technologies -- we could meet and surpass the Kyoto targets easily in a way that would strengthen, not weaken, our economy," said Clinton to applause from the delegates.

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Inuit sue US over climate policy [BBC]:
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Temperatures in the Arctic are rising at about twice the global average.

The Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, a vast scientific study which took four years to compile, found that the region will warm by four to seven degrees Celsius by the end of the century, with summer sea ice disappearing within 60 years.

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"The United States is the world's largest greenhouse gas emitter; it has turned its back on the Kyoto Protocol and has not put in place measures to limit its emissions," said CIEL's senior attorney Donald Goldberg.

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The petition asks the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to investigate the harm caused to Inuit by global warming, and to declare the US "...in violation of rights affirmed in the 1948 American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man and other instruments of international law."

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Gripe

I really hate charities that phone me (unsolicited) and then start off talking really fast with "Thank you for your past support...". I just moved here. I've never even heard of your charity, yet alone supported you in the past. If you did even a half-assed research job to get your intro accurate (and talked a little slower), I might care. It would be nice if the Do Not Call Registry applied to all these groups who pester me.