Thoughts on Education

I doubt that education is a universal panacea to society's woes.

Education is often held to be a solution to the problems that ail society; the moral degeneration of our youth, the stagnation of our economy, the increase in incivility, the demise of the family, all these and more. While education may indeed prove helpful to these issues, I don't think it's wise to consider it a silver bullet to each and every problem.

At the very least, pushing everything to schools and teachers isn't going to work.

Every problem that affects us on a national level isn't a simple one that can be traced to a single root cause, much less a cause stemming from an inadequate or flawed education. If we fail to recognise problems for what they are, and address the entire basket of root causes, not only will we fail to resolve the initial problems, we will also end with a compromised education for an entire generation of students.

My belief is that most issues are socioeconomic in nature, and can be better addressed by dispensing funds to social programs, or to needy receipients. While increasing funds alloted to education isn't a bad idea per se, I believe that funds can be spent more intelligently. Improving school facilities, raising teacher wages, or increasing teaching staff aren't bad ideas, and will indeed help resolve problems stemming from inadequate infrastructure or low quality of teachers. However, simple initatives like school lunches have been shown to have as great an impact on educational outcomes. Thus, we should make proper assessments as to whether our spending is directed to obtain the greatest effect.

The Wish and Miracle Stones

I was tasked to collect two different, but related, artifacts- a wish stone, and a miracle stone.

Of course, these artifacts do not exist in reality, which is why I can discuss it with you.

On the surface, these items work in the same way: while grasping the stone in your hands, you state your desire, and it is fulfilled. Then it vanishes from your possession.

The difference between a wish stone and a miracle stone is the difference between a wish and a miracle.

A wish is fundamentally a strong desire for something to happen; that something is not impossible, but merely difficult or unlikely to occur.

A miracle is an impossibility that has manifested itself.

A wish is a wish, and a miracle is a miracle. It is not possible to perform a miracle, even with the power of a wish stone.

Similarly, a miracle stone cannot grant any wish.

Of course, from the perspective of us humans, a miracle stone is far more powerful than a wish stone, and should thus be able to duplicate the functions of a wish stone.

A saw is far more capable of cutting wood than a knife, but just try carving wood with a saw.

The problem with miracle and wish stones is that aside from their powers, they are utterly impossible to distinguish. Not only do they share the same appearance, they share the identical size, weight, texture, etc. Every single detail is the same, as if they were manufactured from the same mystical source. One can easily mistake a wish stone for a miracle stone, and vice versa.

It is not difficult to see the problem here. The stone is used up when one states his desire to be fulfilled. Whether the desire is realized is another matter altogether.

The difficulty of finding even a single stone makes this a troublesome issue. One cannot simply keep trying until they find a correct miracle or wish stone.

I have heard rumors of someone asking for the ability to know the locations of every miracle stone. Such an ability would enable him to tell the difference between a miracle stone and a wish stone, which is an impossibility that can be granted by a miracle stone. Another rumor tells of someone that asked to be able to find thousands of stones, which is insanely difficult, but not impossible, and thus can be granted using a wish stone.

Those rumors end with them just having the wrong type of stone for their requests.

In fact, there are few tales of someone successfully using a wish or miracle stone. The successful stories are apocryphal at best.

I did, of course, manage to complete my task, and deliver the required artifacts.

Of course, such a thing is impossible, which is why I can tell you how I did it.

It simply isn’t very difficult to acquire stones that vanish when spoken to.

A Piece of Paper

I have heard rumors of a special paper that allows one to lose his memories. If somebody consumes a sheet of that paper, he soon forgets whatever is written on it, even if the written information was something close to him.

Of course, such a thing is impossible, which is why I can discuss it with you.

It isn't something you'll want to use daily, certainly. But at the same time, its value lies in being able to eliminate unwanted memories. Unhappy memories, hateful recollections. These don't occur everyday, but rubbing out the occasional blemish is something that's desirable.

Is it?

Not in excess, of course. Few things are entirely good if taken to extremes. Any tool invented to help inevitably brings forward criticisms of it weakening us. Eliminate the necessity of labor, and the strength of humans will decline. The terrible ease of forgetting trivializes the impact of harsh memories; they are sooner forgotten than overcome. 

Perhaps it might reduce us to psychological weaklings, unable to accept any mental blows without whiting it out.

Of course, such a thing is impossible, and doesn't exist.

Yes, you've heard me right. Have you gotten that all written down? Great. Now for the next step...

A Lukewarm Apocalypse

For people making disaster preparations for the 'apocalypse', as far as things go, I'm not certain how helpful a few tins of food and some tea candles would be in the event of, say, the end of the world.

If the world is doomed, I wouldn't want to live. Imagine the total loss of modern infrastructure; I don't think we'll be able to climb out of such a mess anytime soon, if anything on that scale happens.

Now of course most people taking in the end of days nonsense will say, well, we're not expecting a disaster on that scale. Maybe something less severe, but a disaster nonetheless. A sort of lukewarm threat, perhaps.

I find that the scenarios where the 'disaster preparations' would come in useful are pretty much on the harmless side of the continuum. Surely, anything worth worrying about such that it deserves a special mention must have a greater impact, otherwise the Mayans are not only alarmists, but alarmists with a great tendency for omission.

Of course, it's much easier to say that everyone is nuts.

Binaural Hearing

We have, of course, two ears which jointly allow us to localize the direction of incoming sound. But our ears are much more than simple point hearing devices; there must be some more advanced mechanisms contained within. Why? Because we can tell whether a sound is coming from our back or our front.

Imagine the case in our ears were replaced with two simple mono microphones of appropriate sensitivity. Any sound would be picked up by the two microphones, though at different delays. Knowing the speed of sound, it is simple to calculate the distance of the source from each microphone and hence, the intersections (locii). Note the word intersections. With two point microphones, there are two intersections (in a 2-D scenario) and infinite intersections (dispersed in a circle in a 3-D scenario).

If our ears were only point microphones, we would not be able to differentiate sounds coming from behind us. 

But of course, we can. That is because our ears are directionally sensitive, or at least, structures in our ears serve as directional filters.

One interesting result of this line of thought is that with headphones, it is not possible to duplicate full directional sound. Headphones are merely two point sources of sound; there will be ambiguity of direction, leading us to confuse front-back sounds.

Hashing Web Services for Spam Detection

For many web services, it is necessary to provide your email address as well as other related personal information, such as your name or date of birth. The problem with this is that you have no idea what they do with your information.

One approach that several people use is to put in false information, which sidesteps the privacy issue. Still, for several web services an email address is still required, if only to provide an authentication link to verify your account. A secondary email address dedicated for such purposes is often used.

It is possible to detect the origin of the spam by clever selection of the personal details provided. For example, when prompted to provide a name or user name, the title or address of the web service can be used instead. Thus, when the information is sold and used to address spam to you, the name the spam mail identifies you by can be used to determine the source.

Similarly, more complex hashing schemes can be used to encode such identifier information into birth dates.

The Age of Contention

The main battleship design during the Terran era was a cylindrical vessel body where one end housed the propulsive drives and the other end, the main laser batteries; this design is retroactively known to us as the Lance-type battleship. Contrary to popular perception, Lance-type battleships were not armed with a single very massive laser cannon, or even a small number very large lasers; rather, the main laser batteries were formed of a sizable number of heavy (in terms of output, not size) lasers recessed into the main weapon receptacle, each of which contributed to a large beam of immense firepower. However, since the laser batteries themselves are hidden within the body of the cylindrical vessel body and only exposed in combat, it is easy to understand how such a public misconception came about.

This battleship design resulted in a ship that could output heavy forward fire, but only presented a small cross-section that was difficult for enemies to hit. This was excellent at siege warfare against immobile orbital or planetary targets, but difficult to use against naval targets. Admirals relied on flanking and ambushes to place their ships at optimal positions where damage could be properly inflicted on enemy fleets, but such tactics were rarely effective. However, the very impotence of battleships ensured that battles during the late Terran era were relatively bloodless, even though wars large and small broke out all the time. Hence, the late Terran era was also nicknamed "The Era of Inconsequence".

The status quo was eventually broken by an innovative battleship design, pioneered by the Caled. The primary weakness of old Lance-type battleships was an inability to target (and consequently damage) anything that did not lie in the narrow arc of fire directly forward. This problem stemmed from the cylindrical vessel design, which made it difficult to situate weapons of any effective size on the sides of the ship. The Caled overcame this problem by constructing spherical ships (though in practice the ships were polyhedral rather than pure spheres) with weapons facing each possible direction except the rear (where the engines were). Such ships were considered ugly and were named "Spikeballs" according to their spiky appearance. However, their combat potential was very high, compared to the earlier battleships.

Though some naval designers recognized the value of the Spikeball-type battleship, politicians and naval planners were unconvinced by the advantage of this new design. The Caled themselves secretly doubted the unproven worth of their new ships, and did not pursue construction of Spikeballs on a massive scale. This turned out to be a massive error, though, as it gave rival powers some time to begin their own experiments in battleship design.

The value of the new battleships was proven in the battle of Proxima Delphi, where a fleet of Spikeballs-type battleships was able to inflict decisive damage on a fleet of conventional warships, while suffering little damage themselves. Henceforth navies everywhere adopted the Spikeball design over the older Lance-type battleships. The sole exception was the Terran navy, which found itself in the unenviable position of being stuck with a large fleet of outdated vessels and having insufficient resources or industrial capacity to modernize its fleet on a large scale. This led to the diminishment of Terran power and prestige and the loss of its position as the galactic superpower, though in any case it was still a first-rate power of prominence.

The Spikeball battleship brought about a new era in naval warfare. Though no power was especially advantaged by the introduction of the Spikeball (with the minor exception of the Caled, who unfortunately due to their initial hesitation only retained a small numerical advantage in the number of modern battleships), since all powers had equal access to the design and production of Spikeball-type battleships, the galactic scene was changed forever. Where naval battle in the Terran era was inconclusive, the newer battleships were much more capable of dealing damage to each other. Battles could once again be won or lost, and wars were once again bloody.

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Part I: Battleships in the Terran Era