I'm holdin' out for something better

NSA asks a really smart Will why he shouldn't work for NSA....(imdb quote)

"""
Will: Why shouldn't I work for the N.S.A.? That's a tough one, but I'll take a shot. Say I'm working at N.S.A. Somebody puts a code on my desk, something nobody else can break. Maybe I take a shot at it and maybe I break it. And I'm real happy with myself, 'cause I did my job well. But maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or the Middle East. Once they have that location, they bomb the village where the rebels were hiding and fifteen hundred people I never met, never had a no problem with get killed. Now the politicians are sayin', "Oh, Send in the marines to secure the area" 'cause they don't give a shit. It won't be their kid over there, gettin' shot. Just like it wasn't them when their number got called, 'cause they were pullin' a tour in the National Guard. It'll be some kid from Southie takin' shrapnel in the ass. And he comes back to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from. And the guy who put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job, 'cause he'll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks. Meanwhile he realizes the only reason he was over there in the first place was so we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price. And of course the oil companies used the skirmish over there to scare up domestic oil prices. A cute little ancillary benefit for them, but it ain't helping my buddy at two-fifty a gallon. And they're takin' their sweet time bringin' the oil back of course, and maybe even took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and fuckin' play slalom with the icebergs, and it ain't too long 'til he hits one, spills the oil and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic. So now my buddy's out of work and he can't afford to drive, so he's got to walk to the fuckin' job interviews, which sucks 'cause the shrapnel in his ass is givin' him chronic hemorrhoids. And meanwhile he's starvin' 'cause every time he tries to get a bite to eat the only blue plate special they're servin' is North Atlantic scrod with Quaker State. So what did I think? I'm holdin' out for somethin' better. I figure fuck it, while I'm at it why not just shoot my buddy, take his job, give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard? I could be elected president.
"""

aphrodisiac

The PC version:

African-American-disiac

geeky

Vegetarian guy who don't know what he's doing around girl tells a joke:

"Once, I got served a plate of vegies and half a worm at a restaurant.
So, it wasn't so bad, because the semi-worm was stir fried on both end, so I knew the other half wasn't in my stomach"

[[girl is speechless]]


"Well, you know,..., there's the joke about which is better when eating an apple: half a worm or a whole worm."

the guy tried to explain... not thinking, obviously

"because, half a worm would mean he ate the other half..."

The girl recovers, and mubles: "Well, in that case, you should look at the apple and check to make sure it doesn't have holes... because that's a great predictor for if it has worm inside or not."

[[guy speechless at the sudden turn of events...]]

nlp things

NLP folks:

"I wonder why we never used the English section of SAT/GRE/LSAT/GMAT standardized tests for training and evaluating Question Answering systems?"

(Actually, recently saw powerset.com demo which had some kind of extraction/Q&A type results... Seems like the right bar is very similar to answers to reading comprehension questions from these tests: Read several paragraphs and state facts from the piece.)

An Altruistic Intellectual Working Models

Some years ago, late '04 I think, I wrote to some friends(almost all of whom have their advanced degree by now) about an intellectual work model that is without identity and monetary reward (but not without individualism nor identity). I admit that it's kind of childish, but it goes something like this: (and I apologize to my own blog if I've already posted this before)

"""

• Researchers are given secure and secret access to a research forum under uninformative pseudonyms.
• Each person may be allowed to have more than one identity, but they cannot change the name once it is established.
• They discuss/produce with each other under pseudonym.
• They will share ideas, data, analysis, and perform simultaneous and instantaneous peer review--but entirely anonymous.
• Posts are read-only. Corrections can be posted, but original public posts are kept immutable.
  
• In order to guarantee anonymity, one approach is to use trusted reviewers (voted by democratically based on past behavior). These trusted reviewers will receive all discussions and summarize into either notes, or short write ups.
• All significant participants to a piece of research(poster, scripts, paper, book, code, algorithm, ASCII art, etc., etc.) are listed as an author/owner(using pseudonym).
• Reputation is established purely based on collective recognition of past timely contribution and clarity of explanation. External reputation is also established by external recognition--see later point on that.
  
• The ultimate empirical approach by blinding participants to irrelevant aspects such as: race, sex, height, age, language, geographic location, time zones, financial status, government backing, religion, left/right handedness, balding or not, eye color, B.O. hidden agendas (so optimizes intellectual output without regard to the underlying motivation because past experience indicate some of best research come out of very racist and very evil scientist--thus the "mad scientist" cartoon caracture)
• This intellectual work organization can participate in the larger scientific community by submitting work (with pseudonym affiliated with this organization) to established venues.
• Larger work can be published as books but following conventional publication review, editorial and approval process. Money goes toward the organization for future research.
• Patents belong to the organization and the anonymous authors. It's licensing is managed by authors who will come to agreement via small amount of private discussion and public declaration of decision.
• Some small number of public servants must be delegated to implement outward facing aspects of the operation.
  

"""