trigeminal nerve

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 04:26:21 GMT

Tomorrow is Yom Kippur. Tonight was the first time I had been to a Kol Nidre service. It seemed about the same as tomorrow's service, probably.

Yom Kippur is the day of atonement. I am going to go in there and claim to God that I understand that I have little worth, but since he's so merciful, I hope he'll take a moment to forgive me all of the duties and promises that I failed to uphold. There have probably been a lot of them.

Those of you who have spoken to me regularly over the past six months, or who've followed my twitter, or who've read my rarer-and-rarer posts in this space, I hope have marked my commitment to looking "for help and harm exclusively from [myself]." It's every bit as difficult as it sounds. I have long thought that the help I was looking for was accompanied by a certain bearing, that it consisted mostly of attitude, of a certain world-weariness and pleasant detachment, of a flippant disregard for things (which are just things) and people's opinions (which I can't control).

But tonight, reflecting, I've decided that this Stoicism (large S) can't be passive. If it is nothing but mental discipline, I'll never shake the idea that I'm fooling myself. Too often have I responded to bad news by repeating the mantra that it isn't really bad, hoping that the mere act of self-censorship could change my attitude. I wasn't even trying to make myself happy -- just detached, as I had read in my books. (Epictetus focuses so much on avoiding pain and fear and frustration that he makes no mention of what one can use to replace these things.)

My life needs an active recommitment to integrity, honesty, dignity, patience, calmness, and poise. Tonight I was placed face-to-face with the oaths I failed to uphold in the past year. Those are the real sins. The times I promised something and didn't deliver. The times I told myself that things didn't really matter. The times I lied. The innumerable breaches of the social contract (sorry) that binds us all. We have to ask men for forgiveness before we can ask God. Because the covenants I made with you -- with all of you, and you all know who you are -- are what make my life what it is. What do I have if my oaths lie unfulfilled? I have destroyed the very man of honesty that I was hoping to maintain.

I hereby publicly apologize for the many instances of dishonesty, indifference, immaturity, selfishness and anger in my behavior of the past year. Tomorrow marks my recommitment to becoming the man I ought to be.

Please forgive me.

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 04:33:08 GMT

My grandfather died Thursday night. Here is an article about that.

EDIT:

I may have more things to say about this later, but I am not sure right now what I want to write. That's why I'm grateful for newspapers, so that the basic information about this can be provided by people whose job it is to provide basic information.

Doubtless a more personal response is in order, but as I say, it will have to be later.

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 22:21:47 GMT

My other post got eaten, so I'm rewriting at least part of it. Without any further introduction, the tasting menu from an excellent restaurant that I went to near San Sebastian in the Basque region of Spain. (I'm in Bordeaux right now.)

The Best of Martin Berasategui's Cuisine
"The Great Degustation Menu"

My aperitifs vary depending on the whims of the countryside, the sea and the seasons.
I propose that you allow me to seduce you in small mouthfuls. [that's what she said! -- ed.]
Seductive, light and succulent, they will whet your appetite and
be the introduction to a magnificent meal.

Lightly smoked cod with powder of hazelnuts, coffee and vanilla
Mille-feuille of smoked eel, foie gras, spring onions and green apple
Peach gazpacho with cockles and txakoli

this will be followed [sic]

Crustacean and ginger jus upon aromas of vegetables
Oyster with water cress, rocket leaves and apple chlorophyll, lemon grass and fennel cream with oxalis aceiosella
Little pearls of fennel in raw, risotto and emulsion
Cheese and carabana oil bubble with endives, red onion juice and Iberian bacon
Farm's egg with beet root and liquid herb's salad, carpaccio of Basque stew and cheese
Warm vegetable hearts salad with seafood, cream of lettuce hearts and idionized juice
Roast red mullet with crystals of soft scales and juice of white chocolate with seaweeds
Roasted Araiz's pigeon, fresh pasta with mushrooms and spring onions, touches of truffle cream

and desserts to finish

Warm and cold of apple and roots
Coal crumbs with frozen yoghurt and little acid touches of strawberries, lemon grass and passion fruit
As a cold soup, banana and vanilla stew, with citrics and ice cream

It was delicious.

Sat, 16 May 2009 20:22:32 GMT

Thu, 07 May 2009 09:49:00 GMT

It is now early in the morning. I have chosen to continue my now four-year-old tradition of staying awake from the list-release until Thursday evening in order to apply twenty-four straight hours of effort to the various items on this year's list. I hold high hopes for our team's impending victory.

Of course, the current hour being what it is, I am well within my rights to descend completely into a stream-of-consciousness report on my actions, rife with complaint and an overwhelming sense of entitlement. So despite the fact that my grad-school reading period was perfectly timed, I still had to complete a completely ridiculous term project before I could devote my undivided energies to Scav.

Not to mention that I had to eat in Bartlett, of all places, tonight. I like Hyde Park restaurants in general, but I do not think that Bartlett qualifies -- not as a "restaurant", certainly. I would scarcely deign to call it an "eatery" or "cafeteria." Nonetheless, I returned to the tried-and-true spicy chicken sandwich. I found it passable.

I'd better wrap this up, for if I make this entry too long it will be completely impossible to transcribe to other media in time for the Judgment -- now mere days away.

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 22:34:29 GMT

"The Master said, 'Do not worry because you have no official position. Worry about your qualifications. Do not worry because no one appreciates your abilities. Seek to be worthy of appreciation.' " (Book IV, Number 14)

"The Master said, 'When you meet someone better than yourself, turn your thoughts to becoming his equal. When you meet someone not as good as you are, look within and examine your own self.' " (Book IV, Number 17)

These were the quotes from the Analects that I immediately thought of while reading Epictetus. It's not exact, but it's pretty close -- you can't control what material things you have, and you can't control what other people think of you. So you should pay attention to that one thing you do have control over, which is being a good person. Their differences arise in their descriptions of what it means to be good -- either godly (in the Stoic case) or meritorious (in the Confucian).

Really, I just think Epictetus is a hilarious writer for calling his interlocutors idiots all the time. I think the Stoics make a stronger case for ignoring what my translation calls "externals", whereas the Confucian ideal of right conduct is closer to what I think of as the good to which I should apply myself instead.

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 16:23:35 GMT

If you want something outside your control, then you are a slave to he who would provide it to you. You'll praise him when he helps but curse his name when he refuses. So happiness comes in learning what is or is not within your control, and giving up your desire for things you cannot provide for yourself.

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 04:25:18 GMT

Anna came to visit me over spring break; we had a good time. This entry is a response to discussions we had over break, but only so far as these discussions were a catalyst: most of the things I will present are things that I have known about for some time but before now have not been sufficiently motivated to think about them in a systematic way.

The central question that I would like to consider here is, "How should I best live my life?" There are naturally several subsidiary questions to such a broad topic, and chief among these questions is, "I don't usually consider myself unhappy. It's only when I look back onto the habits I've developed that I recognize a crisis. How do I break these habits?" When it comes to living my life, I have recently found Confucius's Analects to be an excellent resource, so I will use excerpts to motivate my discussion:

"Tzu-kung said, 'While I do not wish others to impose on me, I also wish not to impose on others.' The Master said, "Ssu, that is quite beyond you.'" (Book V, Number 12)

I only stumbled across this quote relatively recently, but I immediately recognize Tzu-kung's point of view. His comment encapsulates one of the "habits" that I mentioned in the subsidiary question above. Like Tzu-kung, I wish not to impose on others. I wish this to an extreme degree; I wish it without thinking about it; when it's pointed out to me, I agree to the absurdity of my attempt, but when no one says anything, it is an easy habit to reinforce. So what can I learn from Confucius's response? I can learn that it is quite beyond me.

Now the Analects do not provide any introduction to the disciples named, so we must hope that Confucius's response, while directed at Tzu-kung directly, should be applicable to anyone that makes the same statement. So wishing not to impose on others is quite beyond me. In fact, it is quite beyond anyone. Confucius asserts that it simply cannot be done, or rather that doing so is incorrect. This quote, then, just serves as confirmation that my habit of passivity is wrong.

Perhaps the more general point is that impositions are not objectively bad. Conflict is not inherently bad. This claim could be supported by the quote. Perhaps conflict is useful and even necessary. Certainly it is unavoidable. One should minimize conflict, but also be prepared to use its advantages where possible. For what would happen if one avoids conflict at all costs?

"The Master said, 'Cunning words, an ingratiating face and utter servility, these things Tso-ch'iu Ming found shameful. I, too, find them shameful. To be friendly towards someone while concealing one's hostility, this Tso-ch'iu Ming found shameful. I, too, find it shameful.'" (Book V, Number 25)

The quote describes the perfect Tzu-kung: a man who imposes on no-one, who provides only cunning words and servility and nothing to offend anyone. And this is a shameful thing. Now, I pride myself on cunning words probably as much as anyone can. (The jury is still out on whether my face is "ingratiating.") And God knows that servility is one of my watch-words. For as long as I can remember, what I want has been unimportant, and what someone else wants has been the most sacred. Even on few occasions where I voice an opinion, I back down immediately if a conflict becomes apparent. It is as if I have no will to fight. Every battle is just part of the "small stuff" that everyone tells you never to break a sweat over. It has reduced me to the point where I scarcely feel the need to offer an initial opinion anymore, where I have felt guilt when one of my suggestions is accepted without question.

(Perhaps, dear reader, you feel I am being too harsh on myself. My consolation is that Confucius recognized and condemned these problems millennia ago, so historically speaking I'm not alone.)

The next two quotes go together:

"Chi Wen Tzu always thought three times before taking any action. When the Master was told of this, he commented, 'Twice is quite enough.'" (Book V, Number 20)
"The Master said, 'The gentleman desires to be halting in speech but quick in action.'" (Book IV, Number 24)

The message here seems quite clearly to be -- act! I am half-way to being a gentleman, for certainly my speech is halting. "Better to keep silent and be thought a fool ..." I'm sure you are familiar with the quotation. And now we must take a short detour into Sartre.

Most of my Sartrist thought comes from reading Huis Clos. If you are more familiar with existentialism, reader, I hope you won't find this analysis too simplistic. It is possible that Confucius is mistaken to draw a distinction between speech and action, at least when it comes to judging gentlemen. For both speech and action are seen by others, and both can be judged. Recall our three condemned souls in a hotel room: in a situation like that, can there really be a distinction between speech and action? Everyone sees everything. So a gentleman must have correctness both in speech and action, and fundamentally they can't be too different. Now which is better, to be halting or to be quick?

One must be deliberate, but not slow. "Twice is quite enough," says Confucius.

Where is all this discussion going? I have been delightfully vague throughout the whole thing. This post is really a search: I'm looking for a constant reminder -- for a way to keep myself from falling back into my habits of passivity, of shrinking from conflict, of over-analyzing, of subjugating myself before everyone I see simply because they happen to not be me. I should not be afraid to have opinions, dammit. I should not be afraid to have wants (I do not subscribe to the idea that desire is directly responsible for human suffering). One must think long enough to know what one wants -- but no longer.

Indeed, I have often complained that I feel like I'm not living, but waiting. That I spend most of my time waiting for something to happen to me, and then I can react, and then I can return to an equilibrium point and wait until the next stimulus. And then I look back on my life and wonder why I feel like a non-entity. ("...oh WHOOOOO'S the guy... ...GUEST-STARRING in his own life...")

To continue quoting webcomics: FUCK. THAT. SHIT.

"The Master said, 'The man of wisdom is never in two minds; the man of benevolence never worries; the man of courage is never afraid.'" (Book IX, Number 29)

Quotes are from The Analects of Confucius, translated by D.C. Lau. New York: Penguin Putnam Inc., 1979.

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 22:35:35 GMT

Stupid twitter. I just started using it yesterday and not only is it monopolizing my time, but half my updates don't appear! I can only apologize to what I'm sure is a rapt audience waiting to hear about how I went to get some coffee, then continued coding. It's really exciting.

For a long time I was adamantly against twitter, for much the same reason why I don't update here very often: I can't imagine who would want to hear about my life even when I'm writing in complete paragraphs as I am here; who would really subscribe to hear about each day 140 characters at a time? But in the end connectedness got the better of me. We'll see how long it really lasts.

Sat, 21 Feb 2009 03:32:39 GMT

You will recall that the first time I met my advisor he was wearing a cool t-shirt. So today I wore the new steampunk goggles that I spent this week making. I got a few weird looks, but nobody really said anything. Except for my advisor, who said, "Cool goggles." And later, "Are you going steampunk now?" I have a good advisor.

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 03:29:56 GMT

I had a quiet Valentine's Day. I had a few beers by myself. But I did not want to wallow publicly in my singleness, so I stayed in. Drinking alone? At home? On Valentine's Day? Surely it can't get any more classically depressing than that -- but it was surprisingly not dramatic. It turns out that alcohol affects me in almost exactly the same way regardless of whether I have company or not. I had a few beers, so I was a little drunk, and then I went to bed.

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 03:28:32 GMT

"What Was I Scared Of?" tells the tale of a character who repeatedly meets up with an empty pair of pale-green pants. The character, who is the narrator, is initially afraid of the pants, which are able to stand on their own despite the lack of a wearer. However when he screams for help and the pants also start to cry, he realizes that "They were just as scared as I!" After that the empty pants become good friends with the narrator. Now the boy and the pants are no longer afraid of each other.

Wikipedia contributors, "The Sneetches and Other Stories," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Sneetches_and_Other_Stories&oldid=269564706 (accessed February 10, 2009).

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 02:37:37 GMT

Z. Li, C. Callison-Burch, C. Dyer, J. Ganitkevitch, S. Khudanpur, L. Schwartz, W. Thornton, J. Weese, and O. Zaidan. 2009. "Joshua: Open Source Toolkit for Parsing-based Machine Translation." EACL 2009 Fourth Workshop on Statistical Machine Translation. Athens, Greece. (Forthcoming)

In running text, I'll be buried deep in the "et al" section. But even if I never do another thing in the field, my name is at the top of the paper and stands a good chance of gracing the bibliography of any paper that uses our toolkit in the future. I'm feeling accomplished today.

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 09:23:53 GMT

Read any book by John Green that you can get your hands on. "An Abundance of Katherines" is comic. "Paper Towns" is tragic. I read the latter in one sitting just now.

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 19:45:15 GMT

I did not get accepted to work at the summer workshop that I was interested in. What's worse, though, is that I had to prod them by email to even get them to admit that they had already made their decisions. Apparently, they'll keep my CV on file for next summer. It was going to be so convenient, too; I would work on a problem that is pretty much square in my research interest, and I wouldn't even have to move, and my commute would be at most ten minutes longer than it usually is.

Sat, 24 Jan 2009 02:45:51 GMT

I have been on a totally depressing J.D. Salinger kick in the past two days. "Catcher in the Rye", "Franny and Zooey", and two of the "Nine Stories." I don't know why I re-read these things when all they are going to do is depress me again. Especially "Franny and Zooey", I think. I mean that whole family, the Glasses. They can't even control themselves if only because they're so much smarter then everyone else all the time that it drives them crazy. Well, anyway, it drives both Franny and Zooey crazy.

I actually had another point, but now I don't remember what it is.

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 16:16:58 GMT

From The Elements of Style:

If you have received a letter inviting you to speak at the dedication of a new cat hospital, and you hate cats, your reply, declining the invitation, does not necessarily have to cover the full range of your emotions. You must make it clear that you will not attend, but you do not have to let fly at cats. The writer of the letter asked a civil question; attack cats, then, only if you can do so with good humor, good taste, and in such a way that your answer will be courteous as well as responsive. Since you are out of sympathy with cats, you may quite properly give this as a reason for not appearing at the dedicatory ceremonies of a cat hospital. But bear in mind that your opinion of cats was not sought, only your services as a speaker. Try to keep things straight.

Sir:

I must decline your invitation to speak at the dedication of your cat hospital, for I am out of sympathy with cats. Thank you for your invitation.

Sincerely, &c.

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 06:10:54 GMT

In light of the arrival of this newest Year, I have resolv'd, among other things, to renew my correspondence with the general Publick by increasing the frequency with which I post observations to this Site, namely, my web-log. You will mark, dear Reader, curious stylistic changes in the current post (e.g., archaic orthography, vocabulary &c.). I must admit that I have of late read no fewer than three historical Novels. The first two were a paired set of volumes entitled "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation" written my Mr. Anderson, and the third was "The System of the World," being the third Part of the Baroque Cycle of Mr. Stephenson.

Astonishingly, all of these novels were set in a similar Period and were written in similar Style, viz. that of the eighteenth century after the birth of Our Lord. Your humble Author might therefore be excused this indulgence, as he only hopes to entertain you (and perhaps secondarily himself).

Established readers of this web-log know that as of Thursday last I was prepared to make a trip to the town of Chicago. I now report that the trip was most agreeable, and that I have returned to my home-town safely as of this past Monday evening. I happily renewed and strengthened many of the acquaintances and relationships which I had left behind in that town, and I am thoroughly satisfied that the Character and Traditions of that most noble House of which I am late a member shall persist at least for the next several years.

I have currently been amusing myself with a volume that I brought home from Chicago, namely Mr. Schelling's "Arms and Influence." I find it an enjoyable read, rife with references to the Threat of Pain and the Science of War. I hope to in some small way deepen my knowledge in that field Political which, for some reason, so enchants so many of my friends.

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 05:47:18 GMT

I'm feeling accomplished, because I just built the Star Wars-themed LEGO kit that two of my older sisters got me for Hanukkah. Not only are the S-foils movable, but the kit also includes a figurine of Wedge. If I could ask for only one Star Wars character as a mini-figurine, it'd be Wedge Antilles. (If I could ask for two, I'd pick Wedge and Dak.)

Dept. of Short Notice: I'll be in Chicago tomorrow, and I'm staying through the weekend. The word may have filtered out, because some people know this, but in case the word didn't filter out, yeah, I'll be in Chicago. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone. Then, perhaps, we can catch up without me needing to post a multi-page livejournal entry.

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 21:26:17 GMT

Ouch.

(You can't go wrong with one-word updates every two months! Stay tuned to this space for more news soon, when I am not working myself to exhaustion.)

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 18:04:09 GMT

Engineers, man. I don't know.

So I was talking to one of my professors, because I couldn't quite figure out this project I was working on. The calculation of n-gram probabilities had hit a technical bump. He re-explained the theory to me, confirming what I already knew.

But, I said, what about this step here, where it's possible we'll end up with a term that evaluates to 0/0?

Oh, he said, we just assume that's zero.

... ...

I'm trying to make good impressions on my professors so that they let me earn a PhD here, so I restrained myself from facepalming in his office.

Zero divided by zero is not zero -- it's undefined. Anything divided by zero is undefined. There is no way to just "assume that it's zero." You just can't!

I pressed for clarification, and my professor said the reason was -- ready? -- because "that's how you get the right answer."

Because it works? That's not a reason!

(So I think it shows that although I'm in an engineering program, pure math is my first love.)

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 23:14:32 GMT

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 04:00:56 GMT

I have settled into a routine, which means I now feel competent to report on life as a graduate student. Executive summary: life as a grad student is pretty awesome.

First of all, I should note that, although I am a student in the department of computer science, the CS department is by no means the smallest unit with which I am affiliated. Specifically, Johns Hopkins runs the Center for Language and Speech Processing, which is an inter-departmental affair featuring computer scientists, electrical engineers, cognitive scientists, linguists and the like. It is this sub-set of the CS department with which I am most closely tied. But even within the CLSP, there are a few students working on machine translation: I have fallen in with this crowd of roughly 10 people.

Even though I'm not a PhD student, I am eligible for a desk since I'm part of the CLSP. The desk assignments have not yet been formalized, so I have appropriated a random empty desk for my use. With this background, let us proceed through my day:

Tuesday and Thursday, my earliest commitment is a department-wide seminar that starts at 10:30. Around noon, when it lets out, I sometimes eat some sort of lunch, and then I retire to my desk. I spent the next hour or so working on my little research project -- which I have described earlier and on which I recently made what felt to me as a major (though rather technical) breakthrough. I work until it's time for class.

This pattern generally describes most of my days: arrive on campus in the morning, go to class when warranted, and other than that just hang out in the CLSP offices doing research work. It is a very different experience from being an undergraduate, where the line between schoolwork and leisure is sharply defined. Here, with so much independent work for graduate students, the distinction has become rather blurry -- but it is blurry in an eminently satisfying way.

That is, it is harder and harder to distinguish between doing schoolwork and other things. As an undergraduate, it was clear that time spent in Hitchcock was time to relax, and that there was not any real incentive to keep thinking about problems beyond what was necessary to complete assignments. But here -- again, because of the independence afforded to grad students -- we are free and encourage to be constantly thinking about problems.

As a case in point, let me return to the breakthrough I mentioned in passing above. The idea came to me at about two o'clock this morning, when an idea from a paper I had read two months ago suddenly percolated back up into the front of my mind. I wrote down the thought and waited until the next morning when I could share it with my advisor. He thought it was a compelling idea, and that my analysis of its advantages and disadvantages was "very good."

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that I am thoroughly enjoying my work as a graduate student, because I feel free to think about problems whenever I want, secure in the purpose that any solutions I come up with will have an audience that will take it seriously.

One more thought: during the first meeting of my Theory of Computation class, the professor encouraged us to ask questions and to speak up if we thought she made a mistake. Yes, every professor says this for every course, even at the undergraduate level. But then she added, "You guys are graduate students now, so you should think of yourselves as the experts." This innocuous comment has really given me a lot of confidence. I am more participatory by several orders of magnitude than I ever was at Chicago, and I think my relationships with professors have improved because of it. This will be extremely important a year down the line when it's time to find my way into a PhD program.

These thoughts have been a little disjointed, but if you're considering graduate work and want some sort of perspective, do feel free to ask me.

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 20:56:29 GMT

I'm running out the door, but I wanted to post quickly to say that my new schedule is frickin' awesome:

600.601: Computer Science Seminar
600.766: Seminar in Machine Translation
600.465: Natural Language Processing
600.463: Algorithms
600.471: Theory of Computation

In case you were wondering, 600 is the department code for computer science. 600.601 is required for all graduate students. 600.766 is being run by my advisor and good buddy Chris, and all we do is read one research paper a week and then talk about it. The other ones are normal courses.

The first day of class is next Thursday.

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 18:39:54 GMT

Last night around ten o'clock I had a sudden vision of how to get my project to work as I wanted it. Omitting technical details, I went to be at 3:30.