BRAIN DRAIN

There was a time I could study my heart out with single-minded purpose. I could lock myself up in a room and spend hours on end leafing through notes, poring over readings and working on problems with nary a word of complaint. And I would be driven to do so because I’d want to excel, not simply in the “always do your best” connnotation but rather in the “hit it out of the park!” sense of the word.

Lately, however, I find that I’ve been burning the midnight oil less out of the desire to do things well and more because I fear regret. More precisely, I’ve spent the last few weeks studying hard for a slew of exams for no other reason than knowing that if I goofed around, only to later crash and burn, I’d feel terribly guilty.

Of course, guilt is an excellent motivator and in many instances can lead to quite prudent (some might even say exemplary) behavior. In the finance literature, for instance, there are findings that the fear of potentially huge losses — especially after having had such an experience in the past — is sometimes the only thing that keeps investors from making otherwise risky decisions. Further, some might say that anything that leads to diligence is all well and dandy. Personally, I’d have to disagree. While I am glad that I got the requisite work done, it was a miserable experience on the whole. Better to be a nerd happily studying away than going through the motions for fear of future regret, I say.

Or perhaps I feel this way now that it’s come to my attention I’ve been sleeping with my calculator within reach on my bedside table. But I digress.

Now that the deadlines have passed and the exams are over it appears that my life can revert back to normal. In retrospect, the guilt factor has kept me from getting much exercise, reading any books, playing any games, or writing anything substantial lest I find that the time could have been better spent studying. I hope to remedy this as soon as possible. Really, I should keep in mind how depressing an existence mine has been these past few weeks and try to be less uptight and obsessive the next time the exams start piling up.

I just hope I don’t live to regret it.

The iPod touch has occupied an inordinate amount of my attention over the past few weeks. When first announced, it quickly jumped to the top of my “must! buy! now!” list — until it became clear that it lacked several key features and fell short of working like a PDA. As a result, I’ve been spending a lot of time following efforts by the iPhone/iPod touch hacker community to “jailbreak” the device, biding time to see how things develop.

This week it finally happened: the iPod touch has been jailbroken. What’s more, it no longer takes sophisticated command line programing to get it done, as a couple of applications (at least one written by a 13-year old) can take all the fuss out of the process with just a few clicks of the mouse.

Honestly, I thought I’d be elated by the news, but I have mixed feelings about it. At a minimum, it just means that the gauntlet has been thrown down and another round of cat and mouse between Apple and the much broader end-user community has begun. I say end-user rather than “hackers” because, really, all these guys want to do is to expand the functionality of the product. While it’s remarkable how quickly the iPod touch jailbreak effort has borne fruit, it’s nonetheless worrisome that a future software update from the Cupertino crew may undo the modifications, if not brick the device outright.

I remain hopeful that Apple will see the light and realize that opening up the platform to programmers actually benefits their bottom line. At its simplest, the more the device can do for its potential end-users (such as myself), the more those people will be driven to buy it. Believe me, learning that enabling the add-entry functionality to the calendar just required including perhaps two lines of code to the jailbreak process left a very bitter taste in my mouth: to my mind, it meant that Apple deliberately crippled the device and thereby made their consumers worse off. Apple appears to have have already made a few steps to smooth things over: earlier in the week they drummed up publicity for iPhone and iPod touch Web Applications — a pathetic gesture in my opinion, albeit a well-meaning one — and more recently they’ve announced the availability of software developer kits as early as February of ‘08. Only time will tell what this bodes for the iPhone and iPod touch.

As much as I am already very tempted to head out to the Fifth Avenue store to get a new iPod, what’s kept me fence-sitting is the new object of my obsession: an Xbox 360.

It all started with a trailer for Ace Combat 6 that absolutely blew me away. So I started paying attention, and even my Wii fanboy sensibilities have to admit that the 360 is impressive. It truly is next-generation, and with the library of games already available, it’s a very compelling console to invest in, more so now that Microsoft’s announced a $350 package with two games just in time for the holiday season.

Given my situation, the problem with the 360 is just twofold. First, it represents a completely new investment (I don’t have the original Xbox) and a potentially costly one at that: its games cost around $60 a pop. Second, and more to the point, stories of the dreaded “red ring of death” problem that has plagued the machine — forcing people to suffer through having their consoles replaced multiple times — don’t inspire much confidence.

Times like these I remember why I decided to undergo a self-imposed “tech embargo”, and for the most part I’ve kept to it faithfully. Then again, as those closest to me know all too well, my willpower in such matters tends to last only as long as the release of the next shiny object that grabs my attention.

Jasper Fforde is a maddeningly inventive author. Either that or he’s just plain mad. Anyone who’s read his much beloved and well established Thursday Next series of novels can attest to this, what with Fforde’s keen wit, his ability to drop reference upon reference to numerous literary works without coming across as the least but pretentious, and his knack for playing with the reader by literally turning the printed page into something absolutely fun to peruse. In short, whatever Fforde writes has character in spades — and yes, he’s done it again with the sophomore offering to his newly minted Nursery Crime series, The Fourth Bear.

The story takes place four months after the events in The Big Over Easy. Having solved the mysterious death of Humpty Dumpty, Detective Chief Inspector Jack Spratt and Sergeant Mary Mary of the Nursery Crime Division (NCD) find themselves with a whole lot more on their plate. The city of Reading, Berkshire has plunged into a state of mass hysteria with that most feared psychopathic “person of dubious reality”, the Gingerbreadman, on the loose. Yet inasmuch as this should fall naturally within the jurisdiction of the NCD, Jack and Mary are off the case. Instead, they are assigned to look into the sudden disappearance of one Henrietta Hatchett, also known as Goldilocks, journalist and outspoken proponent of ursine rights. It soon becomes apparent that more ties the two cases together than meets the eye, and what follows is a truly enjoyable romp of detective fiction.

For a new addition to an ongoing series, The Fourth Bear is an excellent place for the uninitiated to become acquainted with Fforde’s work. Although it references some of the events in the Big Over Easy, it is reasonably self-contained and can be enjoyed without much background information from the first book. That having been said, those who have followed the series from its inception are in for a treat: The Fourth Bear runs with the ball passed on to it by its predecessor with great effect. The world introduced to readers in the first book is fleshed out further in this installment, making a setting already built around the improbable and untold story of nursery rhyme characters and other mainstays of popular fiction all the more alluring.

Unlike its precursor, though, The Fourth Bear’s plot is less straighforward: the series of crimes that Jack Spratt and company to investigate requires more time in the narrative to set up. Yet it is also for this reason that the book absolutely shines when things come together for the big reveal. To some degree its title already gives away a lot of what to expect from the whodunit, so being taken on the ride to get there is the real fun. Oh, and to base a story loosely on Goldilocks and the three bears and offer a definitive explanation for how three bowls of porridge poured at the same time could have different temperatures? Simply inspired and too good for words.

A few years ago, my dad went on a tear reading books on the subject of how we understand the world around us. Naturally I ended up his willing accomplice. Among the books he passed my way included such titles as Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink (loved it), James Surowiecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds (loved it) and Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner (hated it). Recently, my dad went through such a bout of subject-specific reading that found two more books of a similar nature headed in my general direction — and I am altogether glad for the experience.

The first of these was Nassim Taleb’s The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, a treatise on the flaw of assuming statistical normality. The eponymous “Black Sawn” is of course a reference to how the actual “discovery” of black swans threw into disarray the once held certainty that “all swans are white”. It is therefore a metaphor for the shortsightedness of human reason and the unmistakable tendency of people to be blindsided by the exceedingly rare occurence. In this regard, the Black Swan that Taleb writes about is an event with three characteristics: it is an outlier (that is to say, improbable), has a huge impact, and people tend to try to explain it retrospectively.

The subject of the Black Swan is something of an obsession for Taleb, who first touched on the subject in his book Fooled by Randomness (which dad also passed my way the last time around). Compared to that first offering, The Black Swan fleshes out the subject a little more methodically and certainly in more detail. For instance, there is a straightforward discussion situating the crux of the matter within the broader issues surrounding positivism such as the problem of induction articulated by David Hume or the principle of falsifiability put forth by Karl Popper. More, the copious anecdotes used to get the message across make the book reasonably accessible and often amusing for a topic that should otherwise be technical and awash in the jargon of statistics or probability.

Although undeniably interesting, The Black Swan nonetheless suffers as much as Taleb’s first book did in that his ideas — and ego — outshine his writing by far. In a sense, Taleb is too smart for his own good, and one gets the impression from reading the text that it is his firm belief that only he can be right (because he’s just far too intelligent to be wrong). Also, as in his prior work, a large chunk of the text transforms into a rant against the stupidity of otherwise intelligent people that oozes condescending. On a more personal note, a central metaphor used by Taleb throughout the book — that pertaining to the difference between what he calls “mediocristan” and “extremistan” — really didn’t work for me and came across as overly pretentious. Having said this, I must concede that there is a fair amount of insight and maybe even entertainment to be had from this book provided one is able to overlook Taleb’s excesses and shortcomings as a writer.

The second book thrown my way was Benoit Mandelbrot’s The (Mis)Behavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Risk, Return and Reward. Co-authored with journalist Richard Hudson (which perhaps explains why it is so much better written than Taleb’s book), it is a simple reader on the shortcomings of standard financial theory. Indeed, the first half of the book outlines the key contributions to modern finance leading to the development of the oft-cited Capital Asset Pricing Model, offering a very sober discussion of its limitations and its sometimes unrealistic assumptions. The second half of the book is devoted to explaining fractal geometry, pioneered by Mandelbrot himself, ultimately making the case for its applicability to financial analysis.

Given the subject matter, what Mandelbrot and Hudson have to offer is surprisingly light and very engaging reading. The main drawback, however, is that the book delves into the more interesting subject of fractal geometry in only a cursory manner, which is to say far less than the book’s title and preface seem to imply. Those intent on a more detailed treatment of the subject would be better served looking up Mandelbrot’s other works. For what it is, however, The (Mis)Behavior of Markets is the type of book that those with even a passing interest in finance would do well to peruse.

[This is a follow-up to a prior entry on "Non-Stochastic Reading". To read the earlier piece, click here.]

I first saw this Halo 3 video over at Kotaku before finding it on other gaming sites. The combination of “death-from-above” and “near-miss-turned-luckiest-shot-in-Halo-history” is pretty amazing, not to mention downright funny.

If it doesn’t elicit a well-earned gamer’s “Woot!”, I don’t know what will.

[BlackShadowMist's amazing Halo grenade toss, via Major League Gaming.]

(Second of Two Parts.)

For a series containing all the elements I should otherwise enjoy in a story, three things about His Dark Materials bother me. Two of these are perhaps as much a matter of style (on the writer’s part) and taste (on the reader’s) more than anything else, and thus may only resonate with those who share the same sensibilities as myself. Much has already been made of the third by critics of the trilogy, yet I feel compelled to also weigh in on the issue.

First, like most fantasy books, it goes without saying that much of His Dark Materials borders on the contrived. Ordinarily this wouldn’t be a problem — the fantasy genre derives much of its charm from this very fact, to be sure — were it not for these novels erring on the side of excess. The series is chock full of details that simply do not go anywhere or that do not really add anything to the overall tale. The mix of races and dimensions introduced even at the very end of the tale and jarring plot twists among which include a sudden transmogrification of the tale into a love story, to name but two qualms I have with the books, give the impression that Philip Pullman was just making most of it up as he went along. As a result, the series does evoke a sense of grandness when considered in broad strokes, yet suffers in comparison when considered in detail. The most egregious example of this is perhaps in the final pages of the Golden Compass where, in his desire to push the story along and write about the onset of Asriel’s rebellion, Pullman succeeds in writing a scene where readers are left to wonder out loud, “What just happened here?”

Some might contend that this penchant for the unexpected is precisely what sets His Dark Materials apart from other titles that occupy the same space. This may be true were it not for the tendency of the “unexpected” to muddle the story telling. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the second matter I take issue with in the series: the characters’ moral ambiguity. If the trilogy stands out in any one respect, it would be in that it is exceedingly difficult to distinguish the story’s “good guys” from its “bad guys”, which is not entirely a good thing. Perhaps Pullman’s intention was to write a set of multifaceted and otherwise complex characters that add some depth to the plot; for my part, I find that all he accomplishes is to make it increasingly difficult for readers to identify with any one character or cause throughout the trilogy.

Then again, there is at least one theme that remains constant throughout the three books: they contain undercurrents that are unabashedly anti-religion, if not specifically anti-Church. This is arguably the most controversial aspect of the book, and the one that I object to the most. There is no denying that the Church and its beliefs are cast in a bad light throughout the series: the latter is portrayed as a scheming and sinister institution, while the “Authority” (that is to say, God) is depicted as a mere fraud. Certainly every author is entitled to his own opinion, and has the freedom to define protagonists and antagonists as s/he sees fit; yet this slant that Philip Pullman adopts may almost be excused as a mere plot device were it not for the underlying meanness that seems to be behind it. Other authors have done much the same with greater effect and, in my opinion, in much better taste.

Philip Pullman’s fans hold up His Dark Materials alongside such epic works of fantasy as J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, or more recently as an alternative to fill the void left since the story of the Boy Who Lived came to a close. Where the former is concerned, I would have to say that everyone is entitled to play favorites — and Pullman is clearly not mine — and must point out that the trilogy would more appropriately be described as the anti-Narnia. As for the latter, there is a case to be made that His Dark Materials can help tide over the uninitiated looking for some flight of fancy to occupy them after Harry Potter, though it is not for everyone. Its acclaim notwithstanding, Philip Pullman’s saga as I see it is less enthralling, less innocent, and ultimately less inspiring than those of the aforementioned titles to which it often draws comparisons — titles that, by and large, unmistakably do fantasy right.