There is a (mis-attributed) quote by Winston Churchill that I ran across a while ago..

Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has not heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains.

Now, even though it’s been established that he didn’t actually say that, I still like the idea.

There has been a lot written lately about the NSA program which constructs social networks based on phone call activity (internationally and otherwise). Listening to NPR during this afternoon’s drive home, I was struck by the “average Joe” reaction that seemed to dominate people’s reactions. People in general were ok with the government getting/reviewing their phone records, so long as it was related to an active investigation. Otherwise, they were really bothered by the idea of the government listening in on their chats with Aunt Tilly. This reaction struck me as odd and a little inconsistent.

If we endorse a program that permits the gov’t to spy on citizens of this nation, how exactly do we know just who needs to be spied upon? I suppose you could say that there has to be other evidence to justify opening the phone records, but that approach ignores a single, crucial data source – the phone records. My guess is that the gov’t would like to start with phone records and then use those to bootstrap more specific investigations. Speaking from a strictly developer/problem solver standpoint, you always start an investigation in the areas where the most information is available. You always start with a model that fits known information and then gather new information and re-adjust the model in reaction. It’s all very Bayesian.

So, most people can appreciate the governments desire to use phone records – it’s an awesome, powerful data source that could (and likely has) bootstrap investigations into suspicious persons. What can’t be reconciled, however, is how to protect the good guys from undue invasion of privacy. This is where I am disappointed by our government. If you’re looking for patterns in data, it doesn’t have to necessarily be the raw data – second-order representations of data (if used properly) will still reflect the patterns. In other words, I could be much more in favor of this program if they had (or at least, purported to) demonstrated a respect for my privacy by hashing all the phone numbers, and then only when a suspicious pattern was found obtained a court warrant to investigate further. Even that approach has its problems, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Ultimately, the furor over the phone records is warranted, I think. Sometimes, democracy can be a little melodramatic, but it’s the drama that keeps people engaged and balancing in their government.

I just went through and trashed a bunch of blog post drafts. This process of clean up is a trend threading through my life of late – virtual and otherwise.

I’ve purged most of the TV shows my Tivo records. When I weigh the enrichment that TV shows bring to my life, versus time spent writing, loving my wife, seeking God, exercising (brain and body), I find TV is just a soul-sucking, numb-out drug. It’s something I do because it’s easy to do, not because it is a noble task. If the past few months have taught me anything, with pgm’s passing in particular, it’s the lesson of cheap living. How many hours and days have I gone from bed to work to TV to bed, without being fully present in the interstitial moments?

Realizing one’s mortality is a natural side-effect of losing one you love, or so I’ve heard. For me, this process has brought me to the place where I am comfortable that my time will one day come – I’ll go Home, and life thereafter will be so much better (no more out-of-sync cultural databases will be great). In the meantime, I want to make the most of these days I have. I want to live with a wide-eyed enthusiasm for every moment and glory in my mortality.

Of course, writing those bold words, I have at the back of my mind that I’ll die tomorrow in a fiery crash or some such madness. It’s a stupid fear, but there it is. The reality is that my bold words will require bold effort to change my view on life and it won’t happen overnight. But I’ll take my bold words and do my best. :)

How do you mourn the loss of a brother? What words can you say to console his widow, his family…his child?

I’m just a geek. I deal in bits and bytes, not that irrational world of human emotion. Perpetually awkward at parties and never quite sure of how to deal with new cultural experiences, I’m a clutz when it comes to these difficult moments in life.

If I were a poet, I would pen a lament for Peter. I would stir hearts with phrases and images of the pragmatic coder, persistent fighter. My words would capture his laugh and all readers would feel his joys, his pride of his family and jobs well done.

Unfortunately, I’m just a geek. All I can do is remember the things I learned from him, appreciate the kindness, patience and hospitality he shared with me. I can smile when a funny memory comes up and cry when I miss his presence. I can move forward with these memories and use them to be a better man.

I still don’t quite know how to mourn, but at least I know how to remember.

Peter Millard, a dear friend and key Jabber developer, passed away last night.

stpeter’s blog entry captures many of my feelings, so for a lack of words at this time I simply point there.

I ran across an interesting link in my daily reading today about epigenetics. I wasn’t even aware that it was possible to influence the expression of genes short of radiation of some other dramatic measure. Code 2 is an article all about epigenetics and how it might be possible for us to affect our own genes with habits (good and bad), interactions with others, etc. Based on the reading I’ve done, it seems that the most studied epigenetic inheritence (at least in mammals) is that of maternal effects, or the case where a mother can directly influence the expression of genes in a child by some sort of physical contact.

Crazy stuff.

Bruce Eckel writes on the departure of hyper-enthusiasts from the Java community. It’s a good read and there are lessons to be learned about the passionate, if irrational, arguments for/against languages. The longer I’m in the world of software development, the more I’m convinced that there is no “One True Way” when it comes to programming languages. There is simply a spectrum of tools which can be categorized as “better” or “worse” for solving certain problems.

Go read his writeup – you’ll be better for it. :)

I ran across a great blog this morning – Biosingularity. Lots of interesting articles about advances in the world of biology (computational and traditional).

It seems that I post most often on Sunday evenings. I’m generally more contemplative in the evening, I find, and especially so on Sundays.

Have you read On Intelligence? If not, you really should. My thesis advisor asked me to read it a few weeks ago. While I don’t agree with everything laid out by Hawkins, the general direction he describes is something that gives me hope for the field of AI. The hierarchial, prediction-based model is something that I can wrap my head around and it’s something that’s implementable. I don’t think we’ll be creating Data) anytime soon, but I do think we could start to build truly intelligent software systems… and that’s a big deal!

I’m a little tired of building networked software systems. There’s a lot of feelings behind that statement which I’m not sure how to put into words yet, so I won’t. Suffice to say that I’m pursuing other fields (like computational biology) and my thesis area. These are, for the moment, my “brain candy”.

This week I’ve seen a number of articles about various discoveries in the biomedical world (which is of some interest to me of late). The first discovery is especially of interest as Crohn’s disease runs in my family.

The second discovery suggests that there might be a virus which causes certain types of cancer. My grandmother has long claimed that her mother had “caught” cancer when she was working in a cancer ward. The findings in this article don’t prove anything conclusive, but it’s interesting to see some potential linkage in seeming coincidence and reality.