A recurring dream

I have recurring dreams sometimes. One involves a factory for manufacturing sleep. I haven't had that one since college, mostly because I haven't had any final exams since graduating 4 years ago. This one that I'm writing about now is new. I've had it twice now.

I'm with this beautiful girl (just for reference, it seems she's Elisha Cuthbert), we're going out on a date, and we go to this really awesome Greek restaurant right on the beach. It's a gorgeous place, directly on the sand, with the water lapping against the back of the restaurant itself. When we arrive it becomes clear that we aren't on an actual date, we are "just hanging out", because apparently this is her boyfriend's restaurant. At that moment, her boyfriend swims up to the back window, and I see who it is.

It's Poseidon himself. Only, he's not the ugly barnacle head that he was always made out to be in the myths. He looks like a 10ft tall Chris "Cpt. Kirk" Pine, with flowing seaweed for hair and an iridescent green glow to his skin that is so beautiful, I feel like a jerk just for staring.

So I feel like a complete chump at this point. He's just lounging about on the side of his beautiful restaurant, playing with a bag of pearls and diamonds like they were sand, and I'm trying to come up with an escape plan. She introduces me, and she's hanging all over me in front of him. I'm just about crapping my pants because I think Poseidon is going to smite me for messing with his girl. But he's actually really cool, total surfer dude attitude, and just lounges out, splashing water around, calling the girl "babe" and whatever.

We sit down and order, and she's constantly complaining about him. He's an asshole to her, he's constantly out to sea, he's never paying attention to her, she thinks he's screwing a dolphin and that's where the mermaids came from, blah blah blah. I'm just thinking she's being whiny and I'm starting to tune out, already pissed with how things have played out.

Poseidon comes back and starts bitching her out because she ordered something really fattening. I'm still trying to get out of there, content with just leaving them to be their messed up selves. Suddenly, he grabs her by the arm and hauls off and smacks her across the face (I'm serious, I have full-time Hollywood productions for dreams), which just sets off some trigger in my brain and I flip the freak out. I grab a trident off of the wall (of course Poseidon decorates his restaurant with tridents), and I set about battling Poseidon, god of the seas. There may or may not have been a moment where I utter a phrase like, "Didn't you hear? Greek religion is dead.", depending on whether or not I would be embarrassed admitting to sounding like David Caruso.

The battle is pretty epic. I mean, considering that battling Greek gods is by definition epic — sort of got that whole "epic" thing started — yeah, I'd say it was epic. He's sending squids after me who are throwing starfish like shuriken. One of his band of ninjasquid pulls out a net, which is the ultimate weapon against a trident, totally fowls the thing up and ruins your day. In one leaping motion, I cleave clean through the net with a butter knife snagged from a nearby table, execute the perfect Mario double jump off the top of the squid's head, arch my back and draw the trident back over my head as I fly through the air in slow motion — flash bulbs popping and a hushed quiet in the room like I'm Lebron James going for a monster dunk at the NBA all-star game — and drive the trident deep into his side. His howl sounds like the great humpback whale's mating call, but I've only wounded him. Luckily, he retreats for the day.

Hermes is there, and he's basically David Beckham with a cockney accent. He's so impressed that he gives me his shoes, just because "oi, you ree-lee stuck it to me arsehole uncle, roight. Li-tra-lee, amiright?" She declares I'm her hero and wraps her arms around my neck, pressing her full breasts against my heaving, bare chest (when I lost my shirt, I'm not certain). I mean, by this point I am by freaking definition, but by some serendipitous occasion I don't make one of my typical snarky comments like "Hero? I'm basically Odysseus, wench!". Cupid is walking by and he pats me on the back, "eh, I don't think you need me here bro." Just as she's about to kiss me, she stops:

"Wait, but you're Sean McBeth! Hahahabyelol!"

And I wake up, not wanting to see the world ever again.

Education, Stab 2

I've been working on this posting for a while now, rolling it around in various incarnations in my head. There is so much to say on this one topic, it's very difficult to bring it down to a manageable level and discuss salient points without sidetracking down poorly developed bunny trails. It's also a very difficult subject on which to discuss objectively. We are all products of our educations, and its very easy to assume that we are all products of the same education. Without an example to the contray, people assume they are normal. "Normal: adj. conforming with or constituting a norm or standard or level or type or social norm". We are all widely disparate in our educational experiences, even amongst people we see every day. Because of this, we can often be unaware of the bias we may bring to the discussion. In short, if I write something that sounds completely out of line to you, know that I write largely from my own experience.

There is something wrong with our educational system. Full stop. I doubt you'd be able to find many people who disagreed with such a statement. Not enough choice, too much choice. Not enough funding, too much funding. Not enough college graduates, too many college graduates. Everyone would certainly disagree on to what degree there is a problem and in what areas things are broken, but otherwise everyone has some sort of opinion on how the schools of this [town|state|nation|world] are fundamentally -- well -- shit.

I'd like for you to read an article that my father found, The Bell Curve Tolls for Thee, by a Charles Murray. The basic premise is that some people are stupid, and they can't help being stupid, so perhaps we should stop trying to treat them as if they aren't stupid. It's worrying because it seems we are pushing people through more education than they necessarily need to be contributing members of society. Yes, it would be nice if everyone could give a dissertation on the suitability of path finding algorithms in a variety of network taxonomies, but that's just not a realistic expectation.

Here are a few more:

• "Adult Literacy in America", by the National Center for Education Statistic: suggests that as much as 23% of adult Americans are functionally illiterate. I know I work with at least one person who is functionally illiterate.
• "A First Look at the Literacy of America’s Adults in the 21st Century", by the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL): suggests as much as 51% of the adult population read so poorly that they earn well under the poverty threshold.
• "THEREFORE I AM: Why can't books and TV just get along?", by David Spates: reports that 1/3rd of high school graduates and 42% of college graduates never read another book after leaving school. WHAT?!

I hate to use the term, but this sounds like a national emergency.

Perhaps this is caused by an overvaluing of the university education, and a desire to democratize the college degree. Our president talks about making college affordable for everyone, presumably so that everyone will go. I don't think such a concept makes sense. A university education is supposed to be a step above the standard education, an extra step that is necessary for some people because the standard education can only fulfill the needs of the general populace. If going to college is necessary for success in the work place today, it does not mean that everyone needs to go to college, it means that our high-schools are failing to provide educations that meet the demands of human progress. As a corollary to this, the normal distribution of intelligence suggests that sending everyone to college to ensure their career success must require a culling of standards at the university level -- a "lowering of the bar" -- to make sure the dunderkopfs can get through.

College graduates today matriculate with more debt than any generation before them. Take your pick of links, it's a very popular topic of conversation. It's also no secret why it's happening. The cost of a university education grows faster than consumers have been able to earn money. Using Shippensburg University as a conservative example -- from 2000 to 2005 -- tuition rate increases averaged 5.4% a year, peaking at nearly 10% in 2002, during a time when inflation averaged 2.6%. I know I wasn't getting more of an education for my money -- I had the same professors, and they were teaching the same classes that were planned for the curriculum as when I entered. Where was that money going? You can check my math if you want (and you probably should), I've collected the numbers with links to my sources here: [google spreadsheet].

This is just Shippensburg, a public university that must have all tuition increases approved by a state-ran board. What has it been like at more popular, private universities? The over valuation that I mentioned before would easily lead to an assumption that demand relative to supply is growing.

However, I suspect a secondary source as well, what I refer to as the "campus resort" mentality. I said that I didn't feel like I was receiving anything "greater" for my increased outlay every year. When I entered Shippensburg, we had one gymnasium servicing the entire student body. By the time I left, we had two, and ground was just being broke on the Luhrs Center for the Arts. What relevance does sports have to the educational process? I enjoy sports, but really, what does training in sports beyond weekend enthusiasm garner to preparing people for careers? And while I appreciate having a large performing arts theater in the area now, what value does it add to the university? The university already had three serviceable theaters for any theatrical studies on campus. In short, we were getting "more for our money," it just wasn't in things directly related to the educational process. It certainly wasn't as relevant to someone like me who didn't live on campus.

Why should a university provide rock climbing walls in their gyms? A relatively insignificant proportion of students will use such an apparatus, which is almost certain to be funded through activity fees paid by the entire student body. Why should the university provide dining halls? Aren't college students, who are ostensibly adults, capable of shopping at the grocery store, cooking their own food, and feeding themselves? Necessity is an excellent teacher in this regard. Why should the university provide housing? Your employer doesn't guarantee you a house or an apartment when you are hired at a new job. Perhaps if these things were not provided by the university, but by the local market, students could navigate a more customized path through funding the various aspects of living and education during their college years.

Let's make the entire experience ala carte. Let's have a university offer its name on a degree to any student capable of passing their tests with a satisfactory score. Let's have the university offer classes to anyone who is willing to pay the course fee. Let's make these two concepts that I just presented completely divorced of each other. You find your own classes from any university to attempt to pass the tests of any other university. Universities would be like licensing boards for professionals, which is functionally equivalent to their current use case. Why bother with admissions any more -- what just purpose does the admission process even serve? If a student can pass the tests of Harvard on a self-taught course load, then why does he or she not deserve a Harvard degree? If a student paid for Harvard classes, but finds they cannot pass Harvard tests, then why must that student's efforts be completely wasted? Perhaps they can pass Shippensburg tests, still leaving their university age with a degree, albeit a "lesser" one (there must be some consequence for not doing well).

I've filled an entire screen of text on an extremely high resolution monitor in an extremely small font (or perhaps my myopia really is this bad these days). I'm going to spin this out before I do anymore and end up with an entire book for you to read.

What good is specialization?

Joel Spolsky is owner and founder of Fog Creek Software in New York City. I read his blog on occasion, he usually has really good insights on software company management. If you're a software developer who doesn't know Joel, then you really should get out from under your rock. You don't have to agree with him, but you do need to hear what he's saying.

His latest article is about comparing the current credit bubble pop to the dot-com bubble pop.

"So this was my business plan: We'd start out as a plain-vanilla Web consulting business. We'd look for situations in which we had several clients asking for the same basic thing. Then, using consultants who weren't currently working on gigs, we'd build an application to suit the group's needs. Over time, this product could be licensed far and wide. Eventually, the software side of the business would eclipse the consulting side of the business. That was the theory. Sounds good, right?"

Emphasis mine. I would roughly wager that 75% of every software project is boiler-plate code and documentation that gets completely duplicated between every project. I've tried to get my employers to get on to this idea everywhere I have been. They usually laugh, "where's the money in it?" I just shake my head at the lack of foresight. That one little, simple thing -- capturing secondary outputs of primary processes -- saved that fledgling company at a time when companies literally 50 times their size were completely destroyed.

I don't understand why companies want to specialize so much. My coworkers and I develop libraries and controls on a regular basis that would significantly reduce the effort spent on project development for anyone willing to send us $250 for a license, and yet we just let it sit on the shelf, and force ourselves to rewrite it all for the next client because we never established the expectation that we would reuse company-owned resources to build the client's project.

"Commercial software is not our core competency," the managers will argue. You want a core competency? How about making money? Does making money sound like something you'd like to do today? This is especially true for publically traded companies. Investors don't care how you make them their money, they just care that you do it.

I reject the mantra "Jack of all trades, master of none". Too many problems today require broad knowledge in multiple fields. This isn't the easy days of the early industrial revolution when all you had to do was invent a rounder wheel and suddenly you were a genius, with the rest of us lowly peons showering you with money. Now, there are certainly some absurd mashups of concepts that are too ridiculous to even consider. The relevance of 17th century footwear to modern day yeast cultivation is pretty obviously "uhm, none". But we've ran out of easy problems. Personally, I'm not afraid to tackle the hard ones.

I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite authors, Robert A. Heinlein:

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

U2's 360 Tour

The original article is a bit tongue-in-cheek, but it makes a good point. Here is a choice quote:

"The carbon footprint generated by U2's 44 concerts this year is equal to carbon created by the four band members traveling the 34.125 million miles from Earth to Mars in a passenger plane."

I believe that we have a God-ordered duty to be good stewards of the planet. I don't believe in being wasteful, but in a lot of ways naively jumping on the green bandwagon is wasteful. For example, buying a plugin-electric car will actually increase your energy usage, as the current models of cars coupled with the current electricity grid are not as efficient as gasoline engines. You may not be using as much gasoline, but you have also displaced your energy consumption from one area to another, which in this case is probably coal.

With that in mind, I think that energy price is a fairly good indicator of that energy consumption balance. All told, all costs have to eventually be paid. It's just not possible to avoid, the equation has to balance. There are all kinds of resources that go into making things happen, and oil is not the only one that goes in to transportation and energy. Time is another one, and I think it's a far more important resource than any concern about running out of oil, but that's not the point of this post. If we're just talking about natural resources, I have yet to hear any talking heads mention anything about the dangerously low reserves of platinum in the world, a vital resource for dozens of different technologies inseparably linked to a number of the most viable alternative energy (e.g. the hydrolysis process necessary for extracting hydrogen from water for use in hydrogen fuel cells requires a relatively large amount of platinum).

The loss of non-renewable resources is just one argument for finding developing alternative energy sources. The other argument is the reduction in pollution that is allegedly irreversibly damaging the planet. I do not believe that man-made carbon dioxide emissions are a significant enough proportion of the atmosphere to have a large enough impact on the climate to cause catastrophic climate change. As an analogy, spitting twice into the ocean is 100% more than spitting once, but it's not going to adversely affect anything. However, my views on the merits of the anthropogenic cause for global climate change do not matter. Sticking to the lowest cost alternatives you have available to you, you will do more towards "minimizing your carbon footprint" than buying a Toyota Prius will do (the metals and chemicals in the NiMH batteries of the Prius aren't that great for water tables, either). One tactic satisfies both view points.

We, the people of the middle and lower classes, live in a state of price consciousness. We account for roughly 95% of the population in this country, but we do not account for 95% of the energy usage. Yet we are told by our "betters" that we need to make up the slack in the energy usage. No one on either side of the political aisle denies that such policies like Cap-and-Trade will increase energy prices significantly. Such increases mean a whole lot more to people with only 10% of their income as "disposable" versus 90%.

The upper crust of the upper class do not pay attention to the price of the things they use. They don't have to. The time spent worrying about price costs more to them than it does to waste money by not worrying about price. This article is an excellent example of how this leads to phenomenal hypocrisy. Celebrities and politicians jet around the world to give talks, run events, and play concerts to tell the rest of us how bad we are for using so much carbon.

We could all stand to be less wasteful. One positive outcome of the current global economic depression is that it will make people more price conscious. This is necessary for the health of any society at any time, regardless of the state of the environment or the economy. Unfortunately, it may not mean much when those who are affected the most are those who have the least room for change in their habits. I'm not one for taxing certain classes of people at higher rates than others -- I believe flat taxation is essential for the concept of equal protection under the law -- but I cannot also abide the politicians and rock stars using the rest of us as their personal dumping ground.