On PRISM, surveillance, and terrorism

I've been asked to write about PRISM, the recently rumored government surveillance program. Details are scarce, especially once the hype has been filtered out. I don't know much about PRISM or Snowden in particular, so I'll discuss the topic generally.

One of the principal benefits of a government is that a government provides peace and security for its citizens. A government provides peace by preventing people from causing harm. In modern governments, this is usually done by establishing punishments for bad behavior; for example, imprisonment for theft and fines for minor infractions.

A government must have more power than any of its individual citizens in order to effectively enforce its own laws. After all, laws can only be enforced against people who are willing to break them. As such, the government must have the power to coerce people in order to punish them.

Many modern governments also recognize that it is beneficial to limit the power of the government. This is the motivation behind the checks and balances in the Constitution of the United States of America: each branch of the government can prevent the other branches from overreaching its bounds. There are also specific limitations placed on what the government can do to individuals. These limitations, such as due process, are designed to prevent governments from oppressing individuals, as many governments have done throughout history.

We have seen significant changes in the government of the United States since their inception. There are many more laws and the laws are much more complex. And the ways that information is generated, stored, and obtained are completely different.

These days, we're increasingly aware of people who are unaffected by our legal deterrents; for example, terrorists who aren't bothered by the prospect of dying aren't discouraged by the fact that officers of the law who figure out what they're up to will probably shoot them. It may be that there are more of these people; it's certain that we hear more about them. And technology marches on, ever enabling offense far more than it does defense.

The result is that we have a government that gets increasing demands from its citizens to protect them against some really scary people. In order to be more effective, it does what organizations naturally do: it expands its power.

Unfortunately, the emphasis on pre-emptive law enforcement requires secrecy, as people can change or cancel their plans if they know that they've been found out. And secrecy prevents anyone from watching the watchers.

One of the most frightening implications of our current political and legal climate is that it is impractical for any individual to know whether he or she is breaking some law. What's more, citizens have no idea whether or not their governments are investigating their actions. In a society where people regularly break laws, possibly because there is no course of action that is not against some law, and in which the laws are not all enforced, it is possible for individuals and groups to be targeted by government officials – and that targeting has the appearance of being the rule of law.

Government has always sounded a bit paradoxical; it protects liberties by restricting them. A government designed to promote freedom is necessarily a balancing act. Absolute freedom means that no laws are enforced and people are allowed to kill as they please. Absolute security means that no one has any freedom or privacy.

Unfortunately, there is increasing evidence to suggest that our government is encroaching more and more on its citizens' liberties and privacy. To make matters worse, many experts believe that the denial of these liberties does not provide additional security but merely the appearance of security.

I'm reminded of an occasion when a friend of mine called another friend. She had a virus on her computer and she called a computer expert. After some time talking about it, he offered to visit her apartment in the following couple of days to clean up her computer. She explained that she'd talked about it and felt better and that he needn't bother.

If what we're after is feeling better about it, we're doing fine. But if we actually want to solve these problems, we're going to have to look them square in the eye.

It seems clear that we can't prevent all terrorism. So we must decide what we will and will not do in our attempt to increase our security. At what point have we ceded enough liberties that the lives we save aren't worth living? What risks are we willing to take in order to live free? This debate is certain to be sticky, as these decisions must be made in aggregate and not everyone will see eye to eye.

There's plenty of room for dissent, but my opinion is that we ought to be expanding, not limiting our freedoms. We ought to expand the legal notion of search and seizure to include data, even if those data are stored in servers outside of an individual's direct control. We ought to ensure that people know when a subpoena has been served to collect their data. We ought to actually stick to our current legal doctrines, like habeas corpus. We ought to take our chances that someone will get past ordinary law enforcement and be willing to stand up ourselves to protect others.

One last change we ought to make for our security is that we ought to become the kind of nation that no one wants to attack. This is not a governmental change. It is a cultural change. Most of the important needs we have today are not needs that can be met by any government. They must be met by ordinary people, one at a time.

Am I scared by news like the PRISM story? Absolutely. I think I'm scared most of all that we have politicians and ordinary citizens that have not only allowed this sort of thing to happen, but have made it inevitable.

Petey's dating manual: Tell it like it is

"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."

My last post was about asking direct questions for the sake of clear communication. Direct questions aren't much use unless the answers to them are given honestly and openly. The reasoning for honesty and openness is largely the same as the reasoning for direct questions – and the reasons we shy away from honesty and openness are also mostly the same.

There are many reasons to be honest (and, as I discussed in this post, honesty includes openness). In fact, there are many reasons for honesty that are independently sufficient to make it a moral imperative for all of us. In this post, I will discuss only one of them: honesty respects the autonomy of other people.

Although our lives interconnect, every person makes decisions independently of all other people; in other words, my decisions are my own just as your decisions are your own. But my decisions and yours cannot be wiser than the information we have to guide them. When we give people incomplete, insufficient, or inaccurate information, we do so in an attempt to influence their actions. Moral obligations aside, any relationship that relies on such manipulation is inherently flimsy. The truth always comes out eventually and our lies (or our omissions) have a strong tendency to make things worse than they would have been had we been honest.

So show your confidence in and respect for others. Be honest. Be clear. Be tactful. Trust people to respond maturely when you tell them the truth.

I've written about related topics before. For another discussion on clarity, see this post. For a discussion of communication generally, see this post.

Petey's dating manual: If you want to know, ask

"Do you like me? Check yes or no"

Have you ever thought to yourself as you watched a movie that it would be really boring if the characters communicated well? The plot twists and challenges that make a movie interesting usually come from the fact that they don't listen to each other.

Despite the fact that we recognize the problems in these relationships, we emulate them in our own lives. We guard our feelings and rarely say the things we actually think or feel. We wait for others to act, especially when action means vulnerability. And we assume based on insufficient data instead of asking clear questions.

To make things worse, our mass media tell us that it's more romantic if we don't talk about things. When the right moment comes along, we'll both just know. In my experience, waiting for the fireworks to go off on their own is a good way to ensure that nothing ever happens.

It's understandable that we resist direct communication; it can startle people – and startling someone in an arena such as love, where emotion is such a powerful force, is extremely risky. But you can't play it safe in love and have any hope of success.

We ought to be more concerned with what is true than we are with anything else – including what is comfortable. Even if the truth is unpleasant, it'll come out eventually – and uncertainty is almost as painful as (and hurts much longer than) unpleasant certainty.

We should recognize what we do and don't know to avoid unwarranted conclusions. Allow me to list a few common assumptions that are sometimes, but not always, right. These aren't terribly gender-specific, so feel free to adapt as you see fit.

• It's been 24 hours since I left a message and she hasn't called back. She must be avoiding me.
• It's been 24 hours since I left a message and she hasn't called back. This is inexcusably rude.
• He didn't hold my hand. He must not be interested.
• He didn't open my door. He must not be considerate.
• She seems withdrawn tonight. I bet she's changed her mind.
• He did this thing that I really don't like. He must have a serious character deficiency.

Instead of assuming or speculating, ask a question. I think all of the following questions are fair game, as are the responses.

• We've been on a few dates, but you're physically distant. Where do you see this going?
• I don't know but I know I want to keep going on dates to find out.
• To be honest, I don't actually see this going anywhere.
• Really? I just didn't want to rush you.
• What do you mean to communicate by holding hands? Kissing?
• Are you saying no because you're busy or because you don't want to go out?
• I want to go on dates but I'm really busy. How about we talk in a few weeks?
• I have something going on with someone else but I'm otherwise interested. May I call when I figure things out?
• Honestly, I don't want to go on any more dates. I was just trying to be gentle.
• What can I do to improve?
• You said these words. What I understood was this, but that doesn't seem right. What did you mean?
• You seem distant/distracted/peeved today. Are you okay? Did I do something?
• I'm just tired (not feeling well) today. It's not you and I'll be fine tomorrow.
• I do have something on my mind. It doesn't have to do with you but I would love to talk about it.
• Actually, there is something.

It is crucial to phrase questions well. Identify what you actually want to know and ask that. To stick to the facts and not your interpretation when describing another person's behavior. Ask questions that show both your interest in the truth and your interest in the other person. Make sure there's room for the other person to be genuine. In short, love first, understand next, and act last.

I'm frequently surprised by how natural the conversations are that start with these questions. In many cases, both of us want to talk about the topic in question but have been dancing around it for some time. It's not only natural; it's a relief to finally get it out in the open.

The idea of asking difficult questions is uncomfortable for many people and can be especially uncomfortable for those who feel that their gender role makes it unnatural to do so. But I cannot overstate the importance of each person asking hard questions: the fact that something confuses one party often comes as a surprise to the other and few people bring things up when they think they've already been clear. If you wait for the other person to bring something up, you could be waiting a really long time.

So if you want to know, ask.

Petey's dating manual: Take a look in the mirror

"Know thyself"

Dating is about two people learning to fit together. We can't date well if we don't understand what we think and feel – and why. From there, we can start figuring out what kind of person we want to be with, as we actually understand our thoughts and feelings.

It pays to ask some obvious questions ourselves, such as what things we like and what our pet peeves are. It pays much more to dig deeper. Even for something as simple as really liking ice cream, there's much more to discover. Do I like it for its texture? Its flavor? Is it that I associate ice cream with celebrations or with good friends or family members? Which brands and flavors do I most enjoy? Why?

This kind of questioning allows us not only to choose better when and how to enjoy ice cream, but also may allow us to better identify other things that we would enjoy that we might not have tried otherwise. It also allows us to articulate ourselves (as an aside, articulateness is more about understanding than it is about expression).

Take another question that goes (perhaps) closer to the heart. I love books. It's fairly normal to have a discussion about which books I've enjoyed reading – and this is a good discussion. But it can be much more interesting for both parties if we go deeper. What makes these books stand out? How did the author create the experience that I so enjoyed? What do I like about these characters? What about this book that seems similar? Why did I enjoy this book but not that one? What are my favorite passages in the book? Plot elements? Ideas?

The more we know about ourselves, the better able we are to express ourselves and find common ground. For illustration, let's imagine that I'm on a date and that she and I are discussing which books we enjoy. If I say that I enjoy one genre (say, science fiction) and my date says that she typically reads a different genre (say, history), we may conclude that we don't have much in common in this area. On the other hand, if I can name a few favorite works (such as Asimov's Foundation and Dune) and my date names a few favorite historical works (including Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire), we may find that we have a great deal in common. After all, Foundation is essentially an exploration of history in a futuristic setting. In one sense, it is simply a recounting of the end of the Roman empire adapted to space. It is also a supposition about how a person or a small group of people might profoundly influence the future. It might be that my appreciation for Foundation would be greatly enhanced by reading Gibbon and my date might love Asimov after having been introduced to his work in that light. If we didn't know our tastes well, we would be very unlikely to stumble across this deep, interesting commonality.

Many of us are in the habit of compromising when it's possible for both parties to get everything they want. For example, when I marry, I may discover that I prefer sleeping with the window open but my wife prefers to have it closed. If we dig deeper, I'm after fresh air and she's after quiet. It may be that a bit of white noise from a fan would help both of us. Or it may be that I could spend a weekend improving the house's ventilation system to allow for fresh air with a closed window. If we argued about the window instead of understanding and expressing ourselves, we'd never find that common ground.

Another reason to look in the mirror is that it solves the (seemingly opposed) problems of insecurity and overconfidence. Knowing ourselves allows us to love ourselves as we are, as we cannot love what we do not know. And loving ourselves resolves our insecurities, freeing us to focus outward and love others. It also helps us to see how we can improve. By improving ourselves, we can become our best selves – and nothing we can do will do more to make our loved ones happier.

Petey's dating manual: Act

Please excuse my hiatus. I've been working on a post and it turned out to be really long. It's basically the dating manual I always wanted but never had. I sent it to a friend to ask for some feedback and she pointed out the obvious: it's really long.

I'm going to publish a series of blog posts, each of them being a single topic from my original post. I'll publish one or two per week.

"Hello? There are two people stuck on an escalator and we need help!"

The first rule of dating is that you have to do your part.

The easiest way to go about dating is to ask someone on a date. Be bold. After a few rejections, one becomes accustomed to it. It always hurts, but it's easy to shake off and move on. Ask questions. Open up and share your thoughts and feelings. Choose to love – first as a friend, with room for romance later on.

Many women feel that it's a man's job to do the asking (a valid opinion, if not the only one). Regardless of who does what in a relationship, gender should not be a crutch. If you don't ask people on dates because you feel that it doesn't fit your gender, that's fine – but be sure you don't believe that it fits your gender because you don't want to have to take any risks.

There is plenty that can be done in dating besides asking people on dates. You can go to places and do things that allow you to meet people. You can encourage people you'd like to get to know (some people call this flirtation). You can make yourself your best self by learning, becoming more physically fit, by improving your dress and grooming, by growing financially, and in many other ways. You can start conversations. You can make it easy for others to start conversations with you. You can lower the barriers that prevent people from actually getting to know you.

Of course, it's possible to be active without acting intelligently. Since my objective is a happy, stable marriage, repeatedly asking someone out when I know I don't want to marry her is acting but isn't acting in a way that will help me reach my dream. I should also be sure to focus my efforts where they're most likely to be productive; for example, I might do well to meet people in social venues where most of the women aren't college freshmen. There isn't anything wrong with freshmen, but they're unlikely to be a good match for me. So if you're trying hard and aren't seeing results, ask yourself what it is that you want and what you might do that would be more likely to help you get there.

"So, when are you getting married?"

People frequently ask me when I'll marry. They give me advice on how to become married. It's the same with basically everyone who's single, especially those of us in Mormon culture.

In most minutes and on most days, I'm at peace with the fact that I'm single. I'd rather be happily married but my life is good. Most of the time, it doesn't bother me when people bring up the fact that I'm single. There's no need for a taboo on singlehood.

But there are hard days. Even though most of the time, people mean to encourage – or, a least, they don't mean to offend – the things that people say can serve to make those hard days even harder.

One reason it's hard for me to hear some things is that my training in logic has taught me to see implications. In my more cynical moods, my mind leaps to more cynical implications. I think that in most cases, people aren't fully aware of what they imply. My goal here is to bring to light some of these assumptions (I certainly don't claim to have treated this exhaustively) and the thinking that underlies them.

You control when you find and marry someone

"So, when are you getting married?"

"It's your turn next!"

I know most of you mean well, but marriage involves two people and divine intervention. I can control only myself. Siblings don't always marry in order. In fact, I challenge you to name a single happily married couple that didn't experience significant serendipity to get together.

You're doing something wrong

"Why aren't you married yet?"

It's very possible that some failure of mine is the cause of my singlehood. I'd love to find something I can do differently that would lead me to marriage. I will listen to your thoughts on the subject. I recognize and value the impartiality of people who aren't me in this matter. I'd suggest, however, that you try to know me well enough to know whether or not I've already done what you suggest – and whether or not I've been doing it for the past several years. And please don't be offended if I decide that your advice doesn't fit me.

Do what I did

"You just need to ..."

This is basically the same as the last assumption, but more specific.

Finding a mate is like finding anything else; we stop looking when we've succeeded. It amuses me how frequently people tell me to try what "worked for them." By that, they mean the last change they remember making before their marriage worked out. Typically, this ignores all other changes they made, all decisions made by other people, and all circumstances surrounding their dating and marriage. And a sample size of one is hardly compelling. I mean, no one tells me to look under my bedside table for my keys as if it's profound wisdom.

Do what I didn't

"Attraction doesn't matter much. You just need to be good friends."

Advice about what one would have done at a previous age tends to come in one of two flavors. One of the flavors is the wisdom of years. I value this sort of wisdom. The other flavor is the faux wisdom of forgetting what youth is like. Advice that is at odds with past behavior often sounds more like the second than the first.

A twenty-something man and a sixty-something man are going to value different things. As I want my marriage to be happy and to last into the eternities, I'm looking for someone whom I can love unreservedly in all stages of my life. That is, some degree of physical attraction should exist because that's important to young men (and, of course, to young women). And we must have the sort of friendship that can mature into a relationship that an old man (and an old woman) can appreciate.

Am I being too picky? Maybe. I'm certainly not discounting the possibility. I ask myself that question quite frequently.

There's something wrong with you

"You're so ...! I can't believe you're not married yet."

Of course I appreciate the compliment, especially since my deepest insecurities are that I'll fail in any number of ways to be an adequate husband or father.

If I'm so kind or talented or whatever that you're astounded at my singlehood, where's the hangup? What failure or fault do the girls I date see in me that you have failed to see? Because I've been turned down for enough second dates that sometimes I wonder.

I've thought about this one a lot because so many people try to say things like this when they're validating others. Sometimes it helps and sometimes it doesn't. Honestly, the best thing that any one has ever done in one of those down days was to give me a hug. She listened well and tried to say things that helped, but a little tender physical contact made much more difference.

You're not married, so you must not really want it

"When you really decide you want to get married, ..."

Really? When I really decide I want to get married?

I don't think I've ever called anyone out on this. I'm going to set the record straight.

I had an epiphany once. It happened at an age when my guy friends were definitely into girls, but when their interest seemed focused either on kissing (or the host of related motivations) or on troglodytic notions of conquest. I remember that I was walking through a hallway in my church. I think I was by myself. And it struck me that my interest was in a stable, long-term relationship. I wanted to be married.

This epiphany took place half of my life ago. Never since then has that desire been forgotten. Every major decision I've made has been designed to make me a better family man. Even during my full-time missionary service, when dating was prohibited, I was conscious of the ways in which that service would help me become a better man. The foremost question I have about every potential career is how it will affect my family life. I could go on.

I don't know all of the causes of my prolonged singlehood, but I know it isn't lack of desire – or effort. Just don't go there.

It isn't just the singles

In the same way that there needn't be a taboo about singlehood, we needn't refrain from talking about other aspects of people's lives. But we should be very cautious before talking with people about when they will have children, when they'll serve missions, and so on. As says a favorite hymn, "In the quiet heart is hidden sorrow that the eye can't see."

My game plan

I know that marriage won't come easily. I know that I'll have to change to get there.

I'm going to keep trying. I'm going to keep asking hard questions and I'm going to keep improving myself. I'm going to keep on discarding ideas and assumptions that I find to be incorrect and I'm going to keep on doing my best to apply what I learn. And I'm going to keep on trusting that one day, I'll find someone I want to marry who wants to marry me.

On what might have been

How many times have you wished that one little thing could change in the past? If that hadn't happened, the effects in the present would be countless and powerfully different. If I'd only chosen to turn right instead of turning left, I would have seen my friend and been able to give him a ride. If she hadn't waited 15 minutes before leaving home, she wouldn't have been crossing the street when that drunk driver came along. We could go on endlessly.

Of course, we don't really know what would have happened. We have gotten pretty good at guessing, but we don't ever know for sure. The scientific method usually involves repeated experiments – and certainly involves allowing others to repeat our experiments. The hope is that if we observe enough things carefully enough, we'll understand cause and effect.

The way that a scientist tries to understand cause and effect is by isolating a single difference. An experiment involves doing two things exactly the same way except for that one crucial difference and observing the results. If changing that one thing consistently gives a changed outcome, we assume that there is (and that we have observed) a causal relationship.

We've become so accustomed to experimentation and so casual as we set up our experiments that we've come to make frequent errors in the way that we see the world. Some of these errors lead us to dangerous conclusions.

Our habit of breaking things down into experiments has trained us to think only of one factor in an outcome at a time. Isolating the different factors is wise, but we must eventually remember the ones we've left to the side. This is especially important because we don't always think of all of the factors when we set up our experiments. The fact of the matter is that many light things fall more slowly than rocks do, although their weight is not the only factor in that measured outcome.

Our legal system has a similar approach to things that can have a similar effect on our thinking: since there are many things that contribute to any one event happening, our law concerns itself principally with a proximate cause. Without this legal doctrine, we'd have no way of assigning any sort of blame to anyone or anything and our laws would be completely pointless. But if we're not careful, this too can train us to think that every outcome has a single cause.

We do well to identify the other causes of the events in life, whether we hope to repeat them or avoid them. We can do so by asking questions like, "what else contributed to this?" and, "what else might I have done in this regard?" When we identify something that we might have done that seems likely to lead to a desired outcome, we can consider if we want to try acting in that way in the future.

It's also a good idea to recognize that, because so many factors contribute to every single event, we rarely have a suitable justification to blame anyone else for anything. Even if the outcome could not have been the same had they acted differently (this is rarely the case), it's usually impossible to prove that another persons actions alone would guarantee that outcome. This is usually impossible to prove because it isn't true.

Similarly, it seems that in most cases where a person tries to influence another's decisions, it's because the other person's actions would contribute to some desired outcome. There's nothing wrong with this, but we'd be a lot less tempted to manipulate each other if we spent more time thinking about what we can do ourselves to contribute to those same outcomes.

On a related note, we usually form opinions too soon about whether or not we want something to happen. I've looked back on several then-happy experiences and wished they'd been different and I've been immensely grateful for many of my unpleasant experiences. In fact, we'd probably all be better off if we made more of our decisions based on our principles instead of what we imagine and hope will be the outcome.

So stop fretting about what would have happened as if you know and figure out how to make the best of the situation you're in instead.

The new way of multiplying that's exactly the same as the old way

There's an article that's been kicking around the intertubes for the last couple of days. You'll find it here (as far as I can tell, this is the original version).

The gist is that there's an easy way to teach multiplication – that the Japanese have figured something out that we haven't in America. I presume that people are sharing because they wish they'd been taught that way in school.

To multiply 12 x 23, we draw these lines:

Now we count the intersections of the lines in each corner:

Here, we can add the two numbers in the middle column and put the numbers together to get 276, which is the correct result for 12 x 23.

But if we restructure the lines slightly:

And remove the lines:

We have exactly the same multiplication with the exact same calculations as we would have done had we simply done as taught in school.

Now to my objections.

The "proof" given that this gives the same result is only a demonstration that the result worked for a particular example. To prove that a method is correct, it's necessary to show that it will always work. If our students could actually demonstrate why these two methods always produce the same results, we'd be going somewhere.

I fail to see how this is any simpler. It actually takes longer to do. I suppose some students might object to the typical American method because it seems so arbitrary and they don't see why it would work, but the same applies just as easily to this visual method.

Try using bigger digits (not my own thought; I found this one online).

Most importantly, though, all of this misses the bigger point. It's not just about being able to perform computation. We have calculators for that. It's about understanding what a computation is, what it means, and how it works. This could be a useful teaching tool but could also be a crutch that prevents another generation of students from understanding one of the most fundamental operations in mathematics.

So why is this any different or better? Maybe I've missed something?

The man in the mirror

I am of the opinion that government-run welfare is inefficient, curtails financial freedom, encourages laziness, and sometimes has the effect of exacerbating the differences between socioeconomic classes. By allowing themselves to be taxed instead of giving themselves, people lose the opportunity to actually serve others (which is extremely beneficial to both parties). They also rely on underpaid government employees to make decisions about how to use resources instead of using the intelligence and good judgment of billions of people around the world to make those decisions independently and wisely.

But, at least for the moment, we're much better off with government welfare. There are far too many people with far too little and if we cut the government programs, they'll starve and go without other necessities. Yes, there are many people who cynically take advantage of the system. But there are many people who depend on welfare for good and sufficient reasons.

I have similar feelings about gun control. The Second Amendment doesn't exist so we can hunt. It exists to guarantee that the country's military power rests with the people and not with a central government. The more restrictions we have on gun control, the further we are from that ideal. I'd like to get rid of guns entirely, but committing absolutely to nonviolence in any form ensures that those who don't have the same scruples are guaranteed to win as long as they're willing to start a fight.

The fact that the military has access to weapons that citizens may not own scares me. On the other hand, I don't believe that we have the moral maturity as a culture to use such weapons wisely. We're too unwilling to hold ourselves and each other accountable for the use of our weapons. More subtly, we're too unwilling to hold ourselves accountable for our angry words and for our unrealistic expectations. We're unwilling to do inconvenient things to ensure our own safety and unwilling to pay for outsourced security. And we're unwilling to come up with a viable solution for the mental health problems that exist in our country.

For the time being making some kinds of guns inaccessible is a reasonable compromise. But it isn't good enough. We need access to guns, but we need to change ourselves first.

All of this reminds me of a piece that Seth Meyers did on Saturday Night Live. His joke about the Facebook Like button hits close to home. Apparently, many of us believe that we can support candidates who promise to change the country for us. But they can't. We are the country. If the country is going to change, we have to do it. Each one of us. We can't wait for our elected officials to do it for us because that's simply not something that people can do. We need to give until government welfare becomes redundant. We need to elevate the way that we interact with each other so that violence, with or without guns, becomes unacceptable. We need to make wise, intelligent decisions on our own. We need to become so good that our government doesn't matter.

Hedges about the law

A couple of weeks ago, I gave a presentation at a TED-inspired venue called MITE Night (Most Interesting Thing Ever Night) about the challenges in communication that are specific to geeks (or nerds – I don't distinguish between the two). After some deliberation, I chose to present with slides as visual aides, using pictures instead of text (except when quoting someone). In the process of preparing, I came across some video clips that I thought would fit well with my presentation.

The first video clip I wanted to use was about ten seconds of a video entitled An Engineer's Guide to Dating by An Engineering Mind. As far as I can tell, this video was created just for fun and was strictly not for profit. The second was a 16-second clip of The Big Bang Theory – just long enough for a single joke. And the third video was the first few seconds of Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up music video (because rickrolling is a sort of online sport).

Of course, these materials are all copyrighted, so I needed to be sure that my use of them was legitimate. The legal doctrine of fair use attempts to describe some common exceptions to copyright law. These nebulous guidelines fail entirely to make clear what is and is not acceptable but give some guidance. But, as my use was of a small portion of each work, as it was for a noncommercial and educational purpose, and as my use of each work would either not affect the markets at all (except perhaps by advertising for the works), using these clips in my presentation is a textbook case of fair use.

I'm somewhat experienced with public speaking and I anticipated some of the common problems. Accordingly, I didn't want to rely on an internet connection, so I tried to put the video clips into my slides. The problem is that although my use of these copyrighted materials would be protected by the doctrine of fair use, I had no legitimate way to download them and embed them in my slides.

As I'd found the video clips I wanted on YouTube, the easiest way to download them would have been from the site itself. But YouTube doesn't provide a way for people (except for the people who uploaded the videos in the first place) to download videos. One reason might be to encourage traffic to the site. Another is clearly copyright protection. If copyrighted materials could be posted and downloaded at will, YouTube would be responsible for being the means by which people pirated countless copyrighted videos. By forcing people to go to the site to watch videos, a video whose legitimacy is called into question can be immediately suppressed. Using one of the many tools that downloads videos would have been a clear violation of YouTube's terms of service, regardless of the fact that my use of the materials in question would have been protected by fair use.

Another way I could have gotten the videos would have been via a DVD (well, two of the three, as I don't think An Engineering Mind has ever made DVDs). I could have ripped (extracted) the video files from DVDs and then I could have selected just the few seconds of each that I wanted and put those videos into my slides. But DVDs have a copy protection mechanism on them. It isn't effective at protecting anything, but it does make the act of ripping a DVD illegal because of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (see the External Links section for the full text). As before, my use of these videos would not have violated copyright law but would have been a violation of a measure whose sole purpose for existence is to enforce copyright law. I should add that neither the current list of exceptions to the DMCA or the list of exceptions that will take effect in January 2013 allow this action, as I'm not a university professor or a student of film.

I could have, of course, simply found video clips on some torrent site and downloaded them. Torrents aren't illegal in the same way that websites aren't illegal, but downloading an entire episode of Big Bang Theory, whether or not I only ever used 15 seconds of it, could have caused legal trouble.

There is also the issue of enforcement. If I ever went to court over my use of copyrighted materials, the decision about whether or not it was fair use would be decided arbitrarily by some judge. I might get lucky; I might not. What's more, I can't afford legal counsel on the scale that the RIAA and MPAA already employ. I'd have no reasonable hope of winning the case, even if I were clearly in the right.

As for preparing slides that would work offline, I was out of ideas. Especially in the short amount of time that I had to prepare, there wasn't a way for me to store these videos on my computer and embed them in my presentation. I was unable to get either Keynote or PowerPoint to embed YouTube videos directly and I eventually went with a Google Presentation.

Of course, I had trouble getting online when I arrived. Since all of my slides were online, the presentation started late and the videos didn't work even after I got online. The presentation wasn't ruined, but it was disappointingly unpolished.

As I thought about these laws and behaviors that we use to enforce copyright law, I was reminded of the Pirkei Avot, which contains the instruction to "make a hedge about the law" (see this translation, which renders the phrase "make a safety fence around the Torah."). The purpose of this hedge was to help people be sure they never violated the law, which was of paramount import. I think this has great theological value; in fact, there are ways in which I hedge about the law in my personal behavior. But when we make hedges that prohibit others from doing otherwise legitimate things – in religion or in anything else – we must be extremely cautious.

We've clearly passed the point of reason with these laws. These hedges have taken the already crippled doctrine of fair use and rendered it completely useless. My troubles presenting when I was clearly doing something legitimate are not the only example of consumers' rights being ignored. It's time that we reformed our laws and our enforcement of them. The doctrine of fair use needs to be well enough defined and protected that ordinary people can exercise their rights in its regard without fear of unjust repercussions.

Apple's patch Wednesday

Apple released several updates yesterday. Most talked about was iOS 6, but there were also upgrades to Mac OS, Xcode, and other Apple software.

I'd heard about iOS 6 but don't have a device that will benefit much from it, so I didn't bother with it.

I use my Mac for school. It's basically a Linux laptop with shiny hardware and an aesthetically pleasing (if space-wasting) window manager. I use homebrew to manage the software I use from the FOSS ecosystem. So when I checked for updates last night it told me that my Xcode command line tools were out of date. This typically means that Xcode itself is out of date. I'd expected to see the update notification from the App Store, as Apple had just forced me to upgrade a few months ago to get a version integrated with the App Store.

It turns out that although the update was available, the App Store hadn't yet notified me. This isn't a huge problem; it just means that I can't trust Apple to notify me as soon as critical security updates are available. And, of course, I love the irony of being notified by a third party application that my Apple software needed to be updated.

I opened the App Store and checked for updates. I told it to upgrade everything (Xcode and iPhoto) and typed in my password to authorize the process. I quickly noticed that the update was over a GB. Having just been released, this patch was in high demand among developers and the download was painfully slow. I was only somewhat surprised that Apple doesn't use something sensible like BitTorrent to distribute its patches; after all, Apple maintains tight control over its products – even after the products have been sold to customers.

Hours later, I checked to see if the download had finished. For some reason, it was still listed and I instructed the App Store to update everything again. I typed my password again. For some reason, the patch was larger. It's possible I missed a detail somewhere, but I'm quite sure that 1.6 GB is larger than 1.3 GB.

The next time I checked, iPhoto had still not been upgraded. I told the App Store to install the update and authenticated a third time. It quickly reported that it wanted to upgrade but that it couldn't until I updated my operating system. Apple, of course, hadn't notified me that an update was available.

So I opened Apple's update tool and installed the upgrade, which forced me to authenticate (I think – at this point, it was late enough that I may have missed something) and then restart.

After restarting, I told the App Store to upgrade a fourth time and authenticated yet again and it happily complied.

When I launched Xcode, it had an update waiting inside of itself that I had to install before doing anything else. Then, finally, I dug my way through the preferences menu to find a way to upgrade the software contained within Xcode, including the command line tools. It listed four updates but said at the top that no updates were available. After ignoring the message at the top, I tried to install one of the tools. After authenticating (twice), I was told that my Apple Developer account doesn't have access to iOS 5. I have no idea why Apple maintains farcical security around its developer tools, as they're certainly available on the Internet without Apple's red tape. And it wasn't immediately obvious how I could convince Apple to give me the software. So I ignored the iOS 5 emulators and moved on to what I really needed.

The other updates didn't hassle me (although I think I had to authenticate again for each one). I was finally done. The experience left me thinking of the years I spent working in technical support for my department as an undergraduate, installing OEM copies of Windows XP on professors' laptops and doing battle to find and install the drivers they needed in order to operate properly. Apple had actually succeeded in creating its own Patch Tuesday (except that it was a day late, as it all came out on Wednesday).

So, Apple, I pose my questions to you: how do you justify such a horrific experience? Are you willing to own up to the fact that your developer tools are clearly an afterthought? Are you even bothered by the fact that third-party tools notify your users about updates (which could be security-critical) before you do, despite the fact that you control the operating system and applications that can deliver these notifications? And we all know that stealing ideas is how the computer industry works, but didn't anyone tell you to steal the good ideas?

A few thousand words, take two

Author's note: I wrote this blog post a few days ago. Soon after posting it, I felt as if I shouldn't have and reverted it to a draft. I figured it wouldn't do any harm to remove it as it had only been up for a few seconds. It's been interesting to see the reaction of my friends and readers, some of whom disagreed with any revision after an article had been posted.

I believe in transparency. I don't intend for this to happen again; I'll be more cautious than before about what I post. I'd like to make it clear that the primary reason that I'm posting now what I did before primarily because my conscience is clear regarding it, not because of pressure.

I attribute my unsettled feelings to the fact that as I looked for images suitable to make into posters, I came across many unsavory images, despite my best efforts to avoid them. The effects of these images has diminished over the intervening days, but was intense. This experience has served to remind me how acutely dangerous pornography is. Needless to say, I'll be even more careful than before to avoid it.

Below this line, this post is identical to what I posted a few days ago.

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I hope my readers will enjoy the little posters I made. I don't mind if you take my ideas and modify them, but you might want to check with the owners of the images (listed below).

Yes, a healthy glow looks good. But all you need for that is to emerge occasionally from your cave.

I think that too many of us believe that we're actually more productive when under the influence. I don't buy it.

It has always mystified me that people extol alcohol for making social interactions easier. I think we'd be better off if we actually learned to face our fears. Also, ethanol reeks.

Secondhand smoke is vile. Please stop.

NYC is full of people who clearly spend time exercising – and who smoke. Clearly, their objective is not long life.

I'm not sure if I can think of anything that would send me running faster than a girl who smells like smoke. Gross.

But buying on credit seems to be normal. Why would you do that?

This one kind of sums up the rest of them.

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Original image sources:

coffee

cocktail

tanning bed

bogart

cigarette

ripped guy smoking

ostrich sign

credit cards

Boys and girls are different

I was talking with a friend about gender relations once. I said that I have little use for reverse sexism, although I think that women deserve much more respect than they currently enjoy. She said that reverse sexism has a place because there is so much sexism in our society today.

This floored me. It's not that I don't see the rampant sexism in our world. It's that the women in my life (my sister and mother) have always been strong. They have expected and deserved respect and they have had it. I respect women greatly and I credit them for it (and I wish them a happy Mothers' Day).

There are many common errors made about the genders. I'll identify some of them and then express, to the best of my ability, some truths about the genders.

Please feel free to disagree – especially if you can explain your reasoning.

Falsehoods

Men and women are exactly the same, except women are better

I don't think this one needs much explanation. Second-wave feminism was ridiculous and we all know it. Let's move onto more plausible and interesting topics.

Women are valuable primarily because they're beautiful

Women, it turns out, are worth far more than their looks. I'll be the first to say that I appreciate women's looks. But there is much more to them and we often fail to recognize it. This is particularly true in a few subtle ways.

Many depictions of women emphasize their bodies more than their faces. I don't think there's any doubt but what this objectifies women, but we're very used to it. To illustrate the fact that this is so prevalent, Kevin Bolk made his own version of some promo art for the recent Avengers movie. There's also Jim Chines, who has a whole blog post of himself doing the poses that women do in fantasy novel cover art.

In contrast, men tend to have far more natural poses and their artwork tries to show strength more than allure (although strength and allure may, in fact, be the same thing).

Many of us don't notice this, even though it's clearly not subtle.

Slightly more subtle is the facial expressions that men and women wear in similar art. Men tend to have stolid, determined expressions. Women tend to have one of two faces: determined or mentally vacant. Determined isn't so bad, but the fact that we're okay with artwork that shows appealing women who seem to have a light switched off in the attic sickens me. It's like we're celebrating the idea that women are something pretty to look at, but that talking with them is a waste of time.

Another way this idea is manifest is in some women's interest in fashion. I will not say that all interest in fashion is misguided, but I fear that some women are interested in fashion because it's how they see themselves getting value – by getting attention from men, yes, but also from getting the approval of their similarly fashion-minded peers.

In summary, if you believe that your self-worth comes from your fitness or your fashion, you're doing it wrong. You're valuable because you're human and because God is your father.

Men are insensitive

Men aren't stupid. Men have feelings.

Of course, our culture tells them that their feelings aren't okay. It tells them not to express them. No one seems to have noticed how similar we all are; it's just that modern girls tend to talk about their feelings before they bury them and that girls tend to use ice cream and chick flicks, while guys use video games and/or movies that feature explosions.

When men grow past adolescence, they start to open to the possibility of expressing their feelings. But the lost years of practice haunt them; they feel awkward as they do so and often have trouble articulating their feelings. In fact, they've spent so long hiding from their emotions that many men can't identify them in the first place. Failed attempts can drive men into deeper emotional solitude.

Fearing emotion, men often don't know how to help others with their emotions. It's time we changed our culture and allowed men to talk. This means that men need to talk about emotions with their sons and with others who look up to them. It must be the role models of masculinity who show examples of emotional maturity so boys can look up to them.

Men are stronger than women

Yes, actually, men tend to have more muscle mass than women do. They usually win if they ever arm wrestle. But we tend to think that men are stronger because we ignore other types of strength. What about the strength to endure the pain of childbirth – repeatedly? What about the strength to sacrifice something important for something else that matters more?

Of course, it shouldn't matter much. When a man hits a woman, he commits a despicable act.

Some people try to compensate by depicting strong women. Yes, there are women who train hard and can do amazing things. Yes, there are women who could beat the daylights out of me. But creating a fictional female character who fights with a sword against creatures with triple her weight just makes the problem worse; if a girl feels helpless because she isn't strong enough, this is more likely to cause further discouragement than to inspire her to greatness in martial arts. And no one should pursue any skill or education to fill a gap in self-worth.

Instead, we ought to celebrate the characteristics that women have. They don't have to have massive upper body strength to be valuable. We need to identify and vociferously congratulate women on the strengths that they have.

A woman dominates a relationship with "feminine wiles"

If a guy falls for you for your looks, know that you will age and that younger women will come of age.

A man dominates a relationship with his strength

This is called abuse. Don't ever let me hear about this happening.

Of course, this can happen in subtler ways than physical abuse. Men should be strong, primarily for the benefit of their wives.

A woman dominates a relationship with her wit

Lots of women in recent mass media (especially sitcoms) are sarcastic and condescending to their idiot husbands. They always get the final words and their husbands never quite catch up. As is the case with the previous two sections, this doesn't describe a real relationship.

Truths

Men and women are different but of equal value

Yes, boys and girls are different. No, one group isn't inherently better than the other.

We should value these differences

The characteristics of each gender are beautiful. We're designed to be together. We ought to celebrate our differences and use them to build a family that's better than either spouse is on his or her own.

Relationships bring different people together

It wouldn't be a relationship if the two members of it were the same. Relationships are about using our differences to improve ourselves and each other. They are built on complete trust and fidelity, one day at a time. The battle of the sexes has no place in true love, because each spouse is concerned only with the other's needs. This sort of marriage is the pursuit of a lifetime. I'll get there, but it will probably be long after my darling and I have slipped the bonds of mortality and gone on to a better life.

Wish me luck.

Making the world worse: sharing passwords

The Associated Press and at least one other periodical have reported that some employers are asking for Facebook credentials – usernames and passwords – in job interviews. The ACLU has commented on it, calling it a gross violation of privacy.

Privacy aside (privacy is an important issue, but not my topic here), there's something that needs to be addressed here. I'll sum it up in a single sentence:

Never share a password with anyone – ever.

Read the whole story...

You may say I'm a dreamer

I think the valedictorian at my high school had a GPA of over 4.5. I remember that I had friends who would avoid taking a class because it wasn't honors or AP and would bring down their GPA, even if they got an A. My approach was to take the hardest (and therefore most beneficial) classes that taught things I wanted to learn. Needless to say, I did not have a 4.5.

But when I went to college, my GPA was too low to even apply for the scholarship I wanted. I worked hard to get good grades. Towards the end of my undergraduate education, I started to realize that I'd made a huge mistake: I was trying to get good grades instead of trying to learn. I began focusing on internalizing the material instead of just succeeding. I learned more, enjoyed it more, and my grades were at least as good as before.

I'm glad I learned that lesson as early as I did but wish I'd learned it earlier. Since then, I've learned a lot about how I learn and about how others learn. I've also learned about how our educational systems could improve. This post describes the problems as I see them and my suggestions for how to improve them.

Read the whole story...

Following a choir director (or how not to date)

I've been practicing with a choir for a few weeks in preparation for a big performance. The choir has a different director for each of the three songs we've been practicing and each of them has a unique style of directing. As is to be expected when styles differ, there are things that I like and that I don't like about their different conducting styles.

Since conducting music is essentially communicating, I realized that the things that I don't like about their styles typify some common problems in interpersonal communication. So I'll describe what I dislike about each one's style and why and then relate it to interpersonal communication, especially in dating.

I'd add again that I like these men. I appreciate what they've taught me and hope they won't take offense at this, particularly in light of the fact that each of them is a more qualified conductor than I.

Read the whole story...

This has gone far enough

Author’s note: I am biased. For religious and philosophical reasons, I reject the idea that any person is incapable of anything. Some people have predispositions towards or against certain ways of thinking or performing and some people have disabilities. But I still believe, at least in general, that anyone who wants to learn something can learn it.

There’s a paper that has been quoted and linked quite a bit for the last little while. It describes an attempt to understand the bimodal distribution computer science teachers have found, no matter how they teach, for many years. All of the evidence seems to indicate that some students can program and some can’t.

The authors designed a test, showing a very small, very simple excerpt from a Java program, like the one that follows:

int a = 10;
int b = 20;
a = b;

The test essentially consisted of recording students’ responses to questions about the effects of the program. Of course, the authors were not so simple as to try to test students on their programming abilities to determine if they could become capable programmers. Instead, their conclusions stated that students who demonstrate consistency from question to question were more likely to succeed in an introductory programming class after the fact. By consistency, the authors mean forming a mental model for what each statement does and using that same model for each statement in each program, in order.

The paper shows tabular results from several different tests. The tables validate the authors' conclusions - and several other conclusions. Importantly, they show that students who have prior programming experience are likely to do very well on the test - much more likely, in fact, than those who have no such experience.

Since the test includes no instruction about programming, students are left to wonder how the statements interact with each other. Most students who have no experience in programming are likely to use algebraic rules to interpret the program; after all, algebra is the only system most of them would know that uses notation that looks like this. An algebraic evaluation, however, leads to a contradiction for our sample program (as 10 is not equal to 20). There is also no reason to assume that students who have no prior experience would assume (correctly, in this case) that the statements take place in sequence and not all at once. It is likely, but not certain, that students who do assume sequence will assume (again, correctly) that the sequence occurs in top-down order.

In short, the test seems to favor those who already know the answers. Those who don't are unlikely to succeed in programming classes.

It seems likely that a host of factors play a part in these findings. Students who do well in math are generally less intimidated by mathematical notation and so can think more clearly on the test and in the class. They also are more likely to have prior experience. Those who have prior experience are more likely to have habitual thought patterns that match other programmers; as long as programmers typically come from some demographic, their work will reflect their polity. This means that language design will favor those who use it because it has to make sense to them. This also means that professors in computer science, who are themselves successful programmers (we assume), are likely to think along the same lines. They are likely, then, to teach in a way that reflects their habitual thought patterns. This favors like-minded students and makes life more difficult for those who approach things differently.

To be sure, programming requires people to learn to think in new ways. It's hardly as if people are born with the right thought patterns in mind. But some students have a head start because of predisposition and prior experience. Those who don't, it seems, tend to do poorly in their classes.

There's quite a bit of irony here. Programmers are, by necessity, logicians (some better than others). We ought to be able to spot logical fallacies easily. But no one seems to have noticed that this study essentially begs the question: if students know programming, they'll do well in the class that ostensibly teaches them programming. If they don't know it, they won't do well.

It seems obvious to me that the problem is in the way we teach; after all, the students who don't know programming but sign up for an introductory class are really the ones the class should target. For example, do we make enough time for the students who don't know about programming to learn? Do we assume that all students will make the same assumptions we make (after decades of training) about sequence? Do we make other similar assumptions? Do these assumptions detract from our teaching? Does the large number of students in an introductory lecture make it impossible for the students who don't know how to program but who want to learn to ask questions and get answers?

In short, does our educational system fail to help those who need its education most?

I think it does.

Chew on this

If we chew food thoroughly, we digest it better. We can swallow it just fine in larger chunks, but it can occasionally cause indigestion and frequently causes our body to avail itself of only some of the proffered nutritional benefit.

Something similar happens when we learn - intellectually or spiritually. Some of us digest our food but do so quickly. We can't be bothered to think about it more than is necessary. We learn what we must in a class to pass the test. Spiritually, we may learn the lessons that are taught to us explicitly but fail to learn the lessons that are available to us but that aren't called to our attention.

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Why you can't control the Internet

There's a lot of talk about SOPA, PIPA, OPEN, and other proposed legislation regarding the Internet. There are lots of strong opinions and a lot of information - and much of the information is wrong. My purpose is to explain why I believe that governments can destroy the Internet but can't control it.

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Let there be light

The Bible, the Book of Mormon, and other scriptural texts are full of symbolism that uses light. God is light and uses light; those who oppose Him work in darkness (see the links in this sentence for some examples). I've noticed a phrase that is used repeatedly in the Book of Mormon: "God worketh not in darkness." Of course, we are encouraged to emulate Him.

There are many ways to apply this idea. I'd like to focus on honesty and openness.

Read the whole story...