Author Archives: Anand Sarwate

more atrocity

Posted on by

This can’t be good (link via Atrios):

FALLUJA, Iraq (CNN) — The U.S. military is investigating whether a Marine shot dead an unarmed, wounded insurgent during the battle for Falluja in an incident captured on videotape by a pool reporter.

The man was shot in the head at close range Saturday by a Marine who found him among a group of wounded men. The wounded men were found in a mosque that Marines said had been the source of small-arms and rocket-propelled grenade fire the previous day.

…

Four of the men appeared to have been shot again in Saturday’s fighting, and one of them appeared to be dead, according to the pool report. In the video, a Marine was seen noticing that one of the men appeared to be breathing.

A Marine approached one of the men in the mosque saying, “He’s [expletive] faking he’s dead. He’s faking he’s [expletive] dead.”

The Marine raised his rifle and fired into the apparently wounded man’s head, at which point a companion said, “Well, he’s dead now.”

I’m sure the videogame industry will be blamed for this one any minute now. Shift the blame, shift the blame, until it spreads into a thin enough patina so that we don’t notice those bright lines between right and wrong go all fuzzy and out of focus.

Naturally, this is not a statistical sample. This is not a poll. And because of that, the spin will be, as it was for Abu Ghraib, that this data point has no statistical value. But a single point changes your posterior distribution a lot if your prior gave probability one to the event “no torture, no atrocities.”

This news has put me off my homework for the night.

double the twelve step program

Posted on by

In my research I often find myself poking around in unfamiliar areas of mathematics. It was a delight and a pleasure to come across one of Hilbert’s famous problems today — the tenth one, concerning Diophantine equations:

Given a Diophantine equation with any number of unknown quantities and with rational integral numerical coefficients: to devise a process according to which it can be determined by a finite number of operations whether the equation is solvable in rational integers.

For those who do not know, a Diophantine equation is one in which only integer solutions are allowed. For example, consider the equation

3 x + 14 y – 8 z = 9.

Normally the set of triples (x, y, z) that satisfy this equation are unlimited; this equation defines a plane in 3-dimensional space and any point on that plane is a valid solution. But the Diophantine restriction makes things trickier, and now we want solutions for which (x, y, z) are integers. If you stare at this example long enough, you can see that x = 1, y = 1, z = 1 is a solution to this system.

I have a slightly more complicated system to solve, so I had to dig a bit deeper than the definitions. Hilbert’s problem asks if there exists an algorithm to solve Diophantine equations — the answer is no, and was proved by Matiyasevich in 1970 in what was apparently an elegant little paper. Today I was reading a 1973 review by Martin Davis, in which section 2 is called “Twenty-four easy lemmas.” Reading these lemmas reminded me why number theory is so confusing; indeed, one needs a 24-step program to get through to the end result.

For what I hear is a nice review of Hilbert’s 10th, see Matiyasevich’s book on the subject.

the attack on science begins

Posted on by

I really think Fafnir’s onto something:

Leprechauns are all over the universe grabbin onto matter with their tiny leprechaun hands an holdin it together. hen you walk down the street insteada plummeting into pace it is because leprechauns are holdin you down onto the earth. Of course leprechauns are pretty small so when you jump you break free for a little while until the leprechauns grab you again!

I was really hoping that the new conservative agenda would stick to things like locking up innocent people for years at a time without due process, making homosexuals into second-class citizens, and other light pastimes. But now of course, they want to get rid of evolution as well. Because, you see, this is a Christian nation, and therefore the scientific truths that we hold dear should reflect our Christian heritage.

I think all the benefits of modern pharmaceutical and medical technologies that have devolved from experiments predicated on evolution and natutal selection should be rejected by those who deny the foundations on which they are built. If the basis goes against the Bible, are not the fruits of that research also tainted? That’s why I have some respect for the Christian Scientists. They may be nuts for not using band-aids, but at least they stand on their principles.

silver lining

Posted on by

At least someone has some balls:

Judge Robertson ruled that the administration could not under current circumstances try Mr. Hamdan before the military commissions set up shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks but could only bring him before a court-martial, where different rules of evidence apply.

In the 45-page ruling, the judge said the administration had ignored a basic provision of the Geneva Conventions, the international treaties signed by the United States that form the basic elements of the laws governing the conduct of war.

The hubris of our “leaders” never fails to astonish me. Apparently:

Government lawyers argued that the president had already used his authority to deem members of Al Qaeda unlawful combatants who would be deprived of P.O.W. status.

It’s lovely that our government is one in which if someone high enough vouches for something to be true then it is true. True enough to throw someone in prison,
true enough to sacrifice our soldiers, true enough to mortgage the future.

what goes down…

Posted on by

Prior to the election, quite a few progressives I had talked to were largely of the opinion “it has to get worse before it can get better.” Interestingly, those people were rather tight-lipped last week. Perhaps even here, in the bubble of Berkeley, the reality has hit them.

I for one, am more convinced now that it has to get worse before it can get better. Of course, I can say that in my comfortable over-educated academic engineer position.

tooth and nail

Posted on by

The play I am in, Tooth and Nail, opens next week:

UC Berkeley’s Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies presents the U.S. Premiere of:
TOOTH AND NAIL
Directed by Laura Levin
Puppets by Heather Crow
November 12 – 21
Durham Studio Theater (Dwinelle Hall, entrance near Dwinelle Annex)

Tooth and Nail conjures the specter of apartheid through a spellbinding procession of images, narrative fragments, and gigantic puppets. Written in the final years of apartheid by South Africa’s renowned collective, the Junction Avenue Theater Company, the play questions the place of art and political resistance in the “New South Africa.”

November 12 (8pm), November 13 (8pm), November 14 (7pm)
November 19 (8pm)*, November 20 (8pm), November 21 (2pm)
*Playwright/Director Malcom Purkey, a founding member of the Junction Avenue Theatre Company, will lead a post-performance discussion on November 19th. This event was made possible through the support of the Consortium for the Arts and the Townsend Center for the Humanities.

Tickets prices are $14.00 general admission; $10.00 for UC faculty/staff; and $8.00 for students/seniors. Advance tickets may be purchased by phone at TicketWeb by calling (866) 468-3399 or online at www.ticketweb.com (search for UC Berkeley). Advance tickets may also be purchased in-person at the Zellerbach Playhouse box office on Fridays from 1pm to 4pm. Tickets may also be purchased at the door one hour prior to each performance.

PUBLIC LECTURE:
Playwright/Director Malcom Purkey, a founding member of the Junction Avenue Theatre Companyy will give a public lecture: “South African Theatre in Post-Apartheid Democracy” on November 17th at 4pm in the Durham Studio Theater. This event was made possible through the support of the Consortium for the Arts and the Townsend Center for the Humanities.

edith piaf

Posted on by

Non! Rien de rien …
Non ! Je ne regrette rien
Ni le bien qu’on m’a fait
Ni le mal tout ça m’est bien égal !

Non ! Rien de rien …
Non ! Je ne regrette rien…
C’est payé, balayé, oublié
Je me fous du passé!

Avec mes souvenirs
J’ai allumé le feu
Mes chagrins, mes plaisirs
Je n’ai plus besoin d’eux !

Balayés les amours
Et tous leurs trémolos
Balayés pour toujours
Je repars à zéro …

Non ! Rien de rien …
Non ! Je ne regrette nen …
Ni le bien, qu’on m’a fait
Ni le mal, tout ça m’est bien égal !

Non ! Rien de rien …
Non ! Je ne regrette rien …
Car ma vie, car mes joies
Aujourd’hui, ça commence avec toi !

gobsmacked

Posted on by

I’m reminded of the first episode of Invader Zim. “I’m gonna sing the doom song! Doom doom doom doom doom doom doom doom doom doom doom doom doom doom doom doom doom doom doom doom doom doom…”