23:56: Pretty Baby-names

I just came up with a new way for choosing baby-names:

cat /usr/share/dict/words | xargs -i mkvisualid --output={}.svg {}

... and then just pick one that looks nice.

It gives a whole new meaning to the idea of "a pretty name".

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22:04: Tommy Chong and the Evil Bong(!?)

Oh my.

My brother went to the video-store and brought back a recent addition to Tommy Chong's filmography, produced by Full Moon Features (that says something, right there, doesn't it?): `Evil Bong'.

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11:39: Meta-Security

Among the security-patches listed on my laptop, this morning:

gnupg (1.4.9-3+lenny1) stable; urgency=low

I love it when there are security-fixes that I need for my security software....

Though, really:

• It's better than the model wherein I need fixes that don't exist because the supplier reduces the `number of acknowledged issues' by... not acknowledging the issues.

• Not only do the upstream maintainers actually acknowledge the problems (which is the first step to actually addressing them), and fix problems, but there's also a community safeguard (e.g.: the Debian security team), vindicating that oft-cited benefit of using open systems: > Tough you don't have to, you can just fix it yourself rather > than waiting for someone else to get around to it.

• The `security' problem is that GPG can be made to run slowly enough that a server supporting uploads can be DoS'd. That's actually not so bad, as far as things go.

To give the closed-systems guys the benefit of the doubt: maybe it's not fair to expect them to acknowledge all of their flaws--maybe they aren't even capable of knowing that the problems exist. Where is Microsoft's public bug-reporting tool?

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22:24: Inspiring Minds... want to know?

I just sent this to some teacher-friends of mine:

Joshua Judson Rosen <rozzin@geekspace.com> writes:

Kim writes:

Joshua Judson Rosen <rozzin@geekspace.com> writes:

I thought you all might get a kick out of a project on which I've been working for a while: basically, it's an exercise in applied mathematics and primitive-art principles.

I've been keeping a weblog for it:

http://www.twisted-muse.org/~rozzin/weblog/VisualIDs?limit=0

Is this a private viewing? I'd love to share it with a couple folks - one of the teachers I work with, in particular. She has a dual degree in physics and studio art and is helping me "prove" that there are other ways to learn math than textbooks!

No, not private at all--actually, since it's a Free/OpenSource Software project, the more people see it the more chance it should have of attracting contributions and actually being successful.

I did hold off on actually publishing the /code/ for a while, because there was a certain minimum quality that I wanted to attain before I let it out into the world (like raising children, I guess, in so many ways). But now it's public--so, by all means, share away :)

And, actually..., part of the reason that I wanted to share this with you, Amy, Bill, and the other educators /is/ that I hope that maybe it can give you guys something new to work with in trying to get kids interested in both mathematics and art-history--both the math and the art can be taken pretty far/deep in something like this, but, at same time, it's amazing how /basic/ the understanding necessary to get started on a project like this is; and the very premise of the project is, in some respect, that the beauty of mathematics and the deep insight of art should be accessible to everyone--even, hopefully, a taste of the `daily "aha!"' experience that helps to make both mathematics and art so lovable for their practitioners.

It's all the same sort of stuff that I was espousing when I was a student at SHS a decade ago, I guess :)

On that note, my old Senior Project stuff is still up on my website, if you want to show that to your physics-math-art friend:

• http://www.twisted-muse.org/~rozzin/senior-project

Also, I just came across Paul Lockhardt's "A Mathematician's Lament" the other day, by way of this blog-post:

• http://scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=410

It's [yet another] interesting essay that addresses the problems with mathematics-education. His initial statement (after some illustrative contra-scenery):

Sadly, our present system of mathematics education is precisely this kind of nightmare. In fact, if I had to design a mechanism for the express purpose of destroying a child’s natural curiosity and love of pattern-making, I couldn’t possibly do as good a job as is currently being done— I simply wouldn’t have the imagination to come up with the kind of senseless, soul- crushing ideas that constitute contemporary mathematics education.

Everyone knows that something is wrong. The politicians say, “we need higher standards.” The schools say, “we need more money and equipment.” Educators say one thing, and teachers say another. They are all wrong. The only people who understand what is going on are the ones most often blamed and least often heard: the students. They say, “math class is stupid and boring,” and they are right.

Mathematics and Culture

The first thing to understand is that mathematics is an art. The difference between math and the other arts, such as music and painting, is that our culture does not recognize it as such.

High school still seems, to me..., like a particulary great opportunity to reach out to growing people in a pivotal moment of their lives and either nurture them as they grow roots and blossoms or just save them from becoming disillusioned as the enchantment really starts flaking off.

I'm still hopelessly romantic about things :)

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22:09: Mediaeval Icelandic VisualIDs!?

It looks like my opinion on the `meta-primitive art' of VisualIDs is vindicated by actual, direct evidence--JP mentioned, in a recent e-mail:

By chance I came across these images tonight, in the 'comprehensive latex symbols guide'.
Interesting...

Look familiar?

The Museum of Icelandic Sorcery & Witchcraft website (referenced in the URL at the bottom of the second image) says:

All of the signs and staves seen here can be found in Icelandic grimoires, some from the 17th century, some from later times though all of them seem to be related. The origin of this peculiar Icelandic magic is difficult to ascertain. Some signs seem to be derived from medieval mysticism and renaissance occultism, while others show some relation to runic culture....

... and includes numerous example-glyphs with explanations.

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