10-28-03 7:12 PM

The problem with programming for a remote server is that when one forgets to increment the iterator, the remote server goes into an infinite loop, and one can no longer program. Fuck.

10-27-03 10:24 PM

The course which I hate so much, Conversations on the West, is part of the curriculum tract called Foundations of Contemporary Culture. A large part of the course centers around reading and analyzing the Old and New Testaments. At first glance, it may seem that this is logical, since these texts do contain the basic moral ideologies that are the basis of our society. However, an only slightly deeper inspection reveals that the assertion that these texts are indeed the foundations of our society is a fallacy.

 There error is in the assumption that the reason that these texts reflect our moral values is because are moral values are based on these texts. As any logician knows, "after" does not imply "because of" ... indeed, the Canonical books and our morality lie on the same level of causality. I don't know if the jargon that I just used makes any sense - since I just made it up - so let me explain what I mean. The reason that the books and our morality share the same concepts is not that one stemmed from the other; rather, both stemmed from our evolution. These are the morals that we evolved in order to survive as a social animal. Therefore, to say that our morality stems from the moral concepts of some ancient text is inaccurate, since the morality in those very texts is derived from our evolutionary development.

So, basically, there is no reason to force me to read this garbage.

10-24-03 3:47 AM

So, I'm supposed to be sleeping right now, but Jedwin and I made the horrible mistake of discussing the movie The Ring before trying to go to bed. It makes sleep absolutely impossible.

Jesus. If you have never seen that movie, for the love of the God that doesn't exist, DON'T!!!!!!!!! It is by far the scariest thing ever. I'm talking scarier than Hitler. Scarier even than http://goatse.cx. DO NOT CLICK ON THAT!!!!

The horror. The horror.

10-22-03 3:10 PM

Do not skim this entry: READ IT. The problem that it addresses affects the very fiber and character of our society.

Let me not mince words: the "New SAT" is the most inherently wrong, backwards, counterproductive, and just plain asinine development that I have ever had the extreme misfortune of becoming aware of. My eyes literally swelled in astonishment as to what I was reading: I could not, and still cannot, believe that something this obviously and egregiously awful could come into existence on such a grand scale. Let me explain.

First, let me briefly go over the changes that were made to the test.

Math: More complicated concepts, all the way up to Algebra II will now be included. Additionally, the writers of the questions are now free to use mathematical jargon. Finally, quantitative comparison has been removed.

Reading: Analogies have been removed. Additionally, the writers of the questions are now free to use literary jargon.

Writing: This is a new section, which closely resembles the SAT II Writing, meaning that it has multiple choice grammar question, followed by a short essay section.

While many of you may now see for yourselves why this new test is such a vile and odious development, I will elucidate the point in my particular style.

This test takes everything that is wrong with the current SAT (and there are plenty of things) and makes them worse. In fact, let us make a partial list of the the things that are wrong with the current SAT, and then see how the new test makes them worse:

Let us start from the smallest problem (in my opinion) and work towards the greatest and most unspeakably horrible one.

A problem with the current SAT is that it favors rich students by encouraging students to take the test more than once, in hope a higher score. Obviously, many poor students cannot afford to take the test multiple times, and therefore, are at a disadvantage. The New SAT exacerbates this problem twofold. First of all, the new test has more parts. Therefore, richer students will, as they do now, focus on one part at a time, and then use their highest scores on each part for their total score. Obviously, this strategy will now require more administrations of the test, meaning the poor students will be at an even greater disadvantage than their affluent counterparts. Secondly, since the new test is more complex, both in administration and grading, it will be more expensive. Again, this discourages less well-to-do students from retaking, and thereby puts them at a considerable disadvantage.

Having gotten this minor, albeit still important, unfairness out of the way, let us look at the most atrocious aspect of this test: what exactly it measures.

The current SAT is a compromise between an IQ test and an achievement test. However, the lean has been most definitely towards the IQ side of the spectrum. This makes sense. There are plenty of indicators of achievement - or rather, of what the student has learned in school. GPAs, SAT IIs, and AP Tests are just some of the tests that convey the test-taker's learnedness rather than their innate intelligence. Obviously, achievement cannot be ignored as a factor in college acceptance; for this very reason, all of the aforementioned tests exist. However, the current SAT stands as a counterweight to these. By measuring, albeit imperfectly, innate intelligence, the current SAT allows students from educationally inferior backgrounds to show their hidden intellectual ability to their prospective colleges. The current test acts as a way out of intellectual squalor for these gifted students, these "diamonds in the rough".

Now, while reading the next sections, remember that it is this very ability, despite of the imperfections of its practice, that separates the SAT I from the other tests mentioned, and makes it a useful tool; it is a universal test that measures intelligence, meaning that anyone, anywhere who is intelligent, can theoretically prove their intelligence to a college, and work their way to the place in society that they deserve.

The current SAT, of course, has some serious shortcomings in fulfilling this claim. I, as an alumnus of EBHS, have witnessed first hand how careful preparation and coaching can make a student receive a higher score than their actual intelligence would indicate that they deserve. Therefore, the test does not measure pure intelligence, but a combination of intelligence and preparation. Obviously, this is unfair towards the students from underperforming districts and socioeconomic backgrounds, who do not have the benefit of a good education, and who cannot afford private coaching.

If it did not have such dire implications for our society, the "solution" to this problem that the College Board implemented in the New SAT would be comical. To try to eliminate the unfair bias that education and coaching plays in the current SAT, the Board made the New SAT inherently based on education and coaching. The true depth of their hypocrisy is astonishing. Now, instead of being a flawed test of IQ, the SAT is not an IQ test at all: it is just a flaw. Each section is designed to measure the test-takers education, thereby making it impossible for those rare intelligent people with a poor education to prove their intelligence.

The problem is smallest, although still major, in the math section, which now includes Algebra II and jargon, at the expense of quantitative comparison. What is to become of the mathematically gifted student that comes from a High School that never teaches Algebra II or its associated mathematical jargon. On the current SAT, he or she would show their ability by solving challenging, yet conceptually simple math problems, in addition to excelling at the abstract reasoning required for quantitative comparison. The New SAT leaves him or her stranded.

The problem is worse in the reading section. Even if a student is gifted in language, and understands the concepts of the close readings, he or she will not be able to answer the questions, since they now contain literary jargon. Unless this jargon was taught in the student's school, they are at a loss.

By far the worst problems, however, occur in the writing section. Writing, especially grammar, is inherently a subject that cannot be mastered without proper instruction. For example. let us consider the case of a hypothetical gifted student from a particularly bad part of Harlem. Regardless of how gifted he or she really is, there is absolutely no way for the student to have a mastery of American grammar. Why? Very simply, it is because standard American grammar is not used in their neighborhood. Regardless of the student's innate linguistic ability, he or she will undoubtedly use non-standard grammatical constructions, and thereby be incapable of achieving a high level of success of the writing portion of the exam.

Referring back to the "diamond in the rough" cliché, this new test measures the level of polish of the stone, not it's caret weight or quality. It is a tragedy for those stones that cannot afford polishing.

Summarily, this test is an undeniable horror. This, then, begs the question, "Why is it being implemented?" The answer, of course, is simple: money.

The College Board wants people to keep taking the SAT. For this to happen, the colleges have to keep requiring it. And, again, the colleges have to protect their financial interests, meaning that they need to assure that the students they accept will succeed, and therefore fill the coffers of the college by bolstering its reputation and future alumni donations. Therefore, the SAT has to reflect a student's prospects of success in college, not necessarily his or her intelligence. The Board, therefore, cannot be blamed for producing a test that measures preparation and not intelligence; such a test is more relevant for a measuring the test-taker's prospective future benefit for the university that he or she chooses. This does nothing, however, to ameliorate the Board's blatant hypocrisy in claiming that the test is designed to minimize the effect of coaching. Neither does it do anything to alleviate the horrible situation that this test alienates the underprivileged intelligence in our country.

What recourse do we have, then? Well, perhaps a nationalized standardized test needs to be established, as an option for underprivileged students who are disenfranchised by the New SAT. This would shield the test from the influence of finances, and give underprivileged students the chance to excel due to their innate intelligence. Can somebody give me some feedback to see if this makes sense? Email me.

10-21-03 6:46 PM

Nothing makes any sense anymore.

Of course, I'm talking about anime.

What the hell is going on? Jedwin and I are watching some anime called Lain. Nothing makes any sense. NOTHING.

Could somebody please explain what the hell is going on to me?

10-20-03 10:31 AM

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Oh man ... HAHAHAHAHAHA.

I just took my "Physics Midterm" .... HAHAHAHA ... what a joke.

OMG .. you don't understand. The problems where retarded .. below academic physics level. And we only had to do 8 out of the 10 problems. HAHAHAHAHA. I'm going to piss myself. I'm writing this update from my dorm computer, just to show you that, although the miderm goes from 9:30 to 10:45, I had time to walk home and type this before going to my next class.

Ok ... I'll transcribe the test later so you all can laugh thourougly, but one of the problems was to calculate what factor to change the length of pendulum by to maintain its period if it was moved from earth to the moon. I did this problem in the womb. I'm going to die of how easy that test was, if possible.

In fact, I probably will loose points, because instead of concentrating on the test, I had to concentrate on not laughing out loud. And to think that I actually spend time STUDYING for this this. I think I know the material to a depth of 5000 times more than what was necessary. I didn't even need the formulas that I programmed into my calculator. This piece of crap test didn't require me to know anything besides two formulas: w = sqrt(g/l) and d *sin(theta) = N * lambda. HAHAHAHAHA .... o man. I can't control myself. This is ridiculous. Nobody actually has to know any physics to pass that test. What the hell was that???????

Anyway, I'm going to go to Con West now to hand in my paper that is going to get me an F. At least I'll fail something.

Bye.

10-20-03 1:29 AM

Well, I was home for the weekend.

I spent most of Friday with Ilona, being that it was our six month anniversary, and that, even if it weren't, I wouldn't have been able to think of a better way to spend my time. At some point during the day, we met Gene, which too, is usually nice. We then watched gene and other people play DDR, and that was the day.

Anyways, what happened on Saturday was more influential on my current mindset. Let me explain. Basically, I spent the day talking to Matt, who was back for the weekend from CMU. And I was stuck by how different his college life is from mine. His is absolutely packed with activities which I wish that I were doing. He is working on, among other things, CMU's Formula SAE racecar, a competition called buggy (in which you push a small girl up a hill in a buggy, and then role it down - or something like that), and in a competition to make a robot that follows a complex series of lines. The specifics are unimportant; what matters is that he is having fun working of engineering competitions, while I am sitting in my dorm room on my ass.

Now, don't get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with sitting on one's ass. Why, sitting on mine is one of my favorite activities. However, it does get old ... Fast. And when I compare the pleasure of sitting on my ass with the pleasure that I could be doing other things, the latter wins. So, being that it is unrealistic and probably counterproductive for me to transfer, I am going to actively use the resources that NYU and NYC give me for not sitting on my ass.

Most immediately, I'm going to force myself to start going to museums. After all, people come from all over the world just to see the museums of NYC, and I live here. Additionally, most have days when admission is more or less free, so I have no financial excuse not to go. That should keep me occupied for a while.

Secondly, I plan on changing some things about my curriculum. Starting next semester, I am going to try and utilize the partnership that NYU has with the Stevens Institute of Technology across the river in Hoboken. Hopefully, I'll be able to take their introduction to Engineering course and a course on statics. Calc III, Writing the Essay, and a class on computer simulation should round out my semester. In this way, I'll keep myself mentally stimulated, and further my goal of working on the Stevens' Formula SAE car, if possible.

So that is my temporary two pronged plan for stopping myself from sitting on my ass too much. Maybe it'll even work.

Anyways, in case anyone cares, my weekend was rounded out by Sunday, during which I spent a measly hour with Ilona, studies physics, wrote my piece of garbage Con West paper, and then, in preparation for my physics midterm, watched the movie The Core, which was rated as the movie to have the worst physics, ever. And I should really go to sleep, being that my final is at 9:30, today.

Goodnight.

10-16-03 1:52 AM

I just came back from watching a movie with Feldman and his friends from Cooper. And I can say, unequivocally, that Cooper people are just better than NYU people. I mean, it was a bunch of people, in a room, watching a movie, and NO ONE WAS DRUNK! WOW!

Anyways, smart people are just better. The end.

10-14-03 1:10 AM

Well, obviously my headache went away after I took Excedrin. So I am basically sure of what type of headache these are: they are blatant rebound headaches. The problem is that, since I have to function in the immediate present, I need to keep taking Excedrin, at least for now. Which means that I'll keep getting these headaches. Maybe I'll have time to relax and detoxify during winter break. After all, during the summer I barely ever took any Excedrin.

What else? O yeah ... I am about half way done with the 5 page essay that is due next Monday !!!!

Starting things early kicks ass. You see, I basically have no choice. I have to be free during the weekend. Not only is it my 6 month anniversary with Ilona, but now Matt W is going to be coming home that weekend too. So, basically, I have to make time. Which is interesting, because on I wasn't planning on doing any work in advance .. ever. O well. It's never too late to change, I suppose.

So, with the help of lots and lots of Excedrin, I think that I'll be able to do my two physics assignments, a huge calc assignment, and my essay by the end of this Thursday. Which will be the most amazing feat of anti-procrastination that I have ever exhibited.

I love pills.

10-13-03 10:45 PM

I wonder, just out of curiosity, exactly how much more pain I can take before I lose the ability to function.

My head hurts, horribly, every day. EVERY DAY. Do you know what that's like, to be in pain, constantly. It is the worst feeling in the world. I wake up in pain, and I go to sleep in pain, and my pain follows me everywhere I go. I have trouble concentrating, as can be expected when one is in constant and unrelenting pain. Eventually, it'll get to the point where I really won't be able to do what is required of me. I'm going to have to drop out of school and live off of my parents of off of welfare, as a goddamn cripple, because I won't be able to support myself.

I don't even know what causes this torture. Every time I think I find the cause, and eliminate it, the pain comes back, and I have to search again. The only thing that control's the pain at all is caffeine, but I don't know much more coffee and pills my body can take, so I'm trying to wean myself off of them. It isn't working. I hate this.

I hate this so much. It's not fair that my wonderful life is being fucked over by headaches. I'm going to cry. This is pathetic. I'm stopping this crap right now and taking Excedrin like I said that I wouldn't. O god .. I'm a fucking quitter and a coward.

This sucks.

10-7-03 1:56 AM

First of all, could everybody who links to my website make sure that they link to http://homepages.nyu.edu/~hk532/ and not my old website. This, of course, is to fuel my need for validation through an inflated Google PageRank.

In other news, go read Jedwin's site, because we are both insane, and he captured it better than I want to right now, because that would take time, and I'm tired.

Now, for the actual update: Today I would like to discuss the fact that I am going to die. You see, I figured out the reason that I wake up every day with a headache. And that reason is caffeine. I am so addicted to caffeine that, while I am asleep, I go into withdrawal. Therefore, I need to wake up in the middle of the nigh and somehow ingest caffeine, in order to fall back asleep. I'm going to die.

That's all I have for today. Sorry.

10-6-03 1:19 AM

It is now Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar (if I am not mistaken). It supposed to be a time of introspection and fasting. Well, due to tradition, I did introspect, and, through this very introspection, decided that I should not have been following the tradition of introspection, and decided to break the fast.

Why should I fast or introspect? There are only two possible reasons.

First, I might obey the traditions of Yom Kippur for that very reason: they are traditions. My parents, and their parents before them, and so on, observed this day. But why should I do as they did? Perhaps it would be more illuminating to think about why they did as their parents did. Well, as a persecuted and dispersed people, Jews have always stuck to their traditions for a sense of unity and belonging. Unquestionably, this was a necessity in the atmosphere of flagrant anti-Semitism of the USSR. But I do not live in the USSR. I live in the USA. And while I am sure that anti-Semitism exists here as it exists everywhere, it is not so strong that I need the emotional unity that Judaic traditions provide. Therefore, I will not obey the traditions of Yom Kippur solely because my parents obey them.

The second possibility, of course, is that the traditions of Yom Kippur are not only traditions, but are actually laws passed down from God. Of course, this can not be proved or disproved. Therefore, the only way that a person can accept this version is on Faith.

That word is in italics for a reason. It's awful. I just finished reading the first part of Soren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling, in which he uses the biblical example of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac to extol the virtues of faith. As I see it, Kierkegaard regards Abraham's faith as admirable because, as a result of it, Abraham does not have to either fear the worst or hope for the best; instead, he accepts God's plan, and is therefore satisfied no matter what the result. Admirable? Is then ignorance, too, admirable, for it, too, is bliss? To validate himself, Kierkegaard points to the fact that if Abraham had doubted God and chosen not to sacrifice his son, he would not have reaped the rewards of God's blessing, but being that he did trust in God's plan, God's blessing came to him. Need I even point out that the only way this argument makes sense is if the reader himself has faith in God? The argument needs to be true in order to prove itself true! Faith, it seems, is worthless unless one has faith in it. And I don't, and therefore - returning back to my original point - will not blindly follow the traditions of Yom Kippur.

10-5-03 1:07 AM

I have proof that there is no god.

I just watched an episode of the Howard Stern Show. They had a porn star. And a cripple. And the cripple's mother. And a guy with a two inch dick. And his mother. And the mothers had to beg the porn star - accompanied by sad begging music - to fuck their inept, or otherwise ruined son.

The cripple won. And fucked the porn star.

And baby Jesus is crying as he's burning in hell.

10-2-03 1:35 AM

(This is just me thinking ... it is not in any way intended to make sense or be entertaining)

My stupidity is making me depressed.

No, that is an oversimplification. It is not my stupidity, per-say, that is making me depressed; rather, it is the fact that I am smart enough to realize what exactly it is that I lack. Combine this with the fact that this is the very thing that would conceivably make me happiest, and you have a recipe for extreme discontent. Let me explain.

So the rekindling of my personal discontent began innocuously enough: I started to read the book "The Man Who Loved Only Numbers", about Paul Erdös.

As you may have surmised from the title, Erdös was a mathematician, and a great one. The details of his life are unimportant for the purpose of my complaint; it is sufficient to say that he was brilliant at math. And this, unfortunately, is exactly what I am not. And that just isn't fair.

Math, the most fundamental thing there is, the very thing that is the basis of physics, completely defies me. That is not to say that I am bad at it (although, in practicality, I am); the fact that I am currently bad at math is not the problem at all (this is but an unfortunate consequence of the fact that I have been ignoring math for many years now). The problem is that I know for a fact that I lack the ability to ever be good at math. I am cursed with a sufficient intellect to realize this, and it is horrifying. But it gets worse.

You see, there are plenty of things that I know I will never be good at ... infinitely many, to be precise. Sports, writing, art, music, even socializing are all things that I know for a fact I will never master to any extent; this, however, does not bother me. These things are mere trivialities, and I can recognize them as such.

The worst thing about my math disability is that it is in that very subject that I find truth and beauty. And that is awful. I can look at a proof of a theorem and by moved by its creativity, simplicity, and enlightenment, but I can never come up with something like it on my own. I can read about great mathematicians pondering great problems, and I can almost get a sense of what they must felt. But not quite, because I have never, and will never, experience such things myself.

And it gets even worse. Because I will never excel at math, I will never truly excel at physics. Sure, with enough hard work I could become a successful experimentalist, but who cares about that? All experimentalists do these days is try to prove or disprove what the theorists theorize; they are but slaves of the theorist's thoughts. That is not exactly the glorious scientific career I want.

And, unfortunately, the same part of the brain responsible for mathematics - the very part that I lack - seems to be responsible for intellectual games like Chess and Go. Anybody who knows me knows that I am a cripple in any activity of this sort. And thereby, I am incapable of engaging in any sort of intellectual activity with anybody, being that the only ones that seem interesting to me are the very ones at which I am awful.

In fact, I can't even think of anything positive that has come of my supposed intelligence. The only thing it does is make me and others set higher expectations for myself - expectations which I can never even dream of meeting.  I mean, the only proof of my intelligence that I even have is my worthless test scores. Great! I'm sure that Paul Erdös would have been really impressed with my SAT score. Nobody cares about that crap; it means nothing. What matters is precisely the type of intelligence that I seem to have been born without - the type which, because of my relative intelligence in other things, I most respect.

On the other hand, I am naturally good at something: I seem to have an innate understanding of how machines work. If I were able to just accept that this is what I should be doing with my life, then everything would be fine. But no! I had to be born with pretensions of greatness, which, encouraged by a knack for standardized tests, has locked me into a path that, at best, will end in mediocrity. Would my life not be so much easier if I had been born with only my mechanical abilities, and not a pseudo-intelligence that makes me yearn for seemingly greater things?

Maybe my aspirations were not inbred; there is also the possibility that the current glorification of math has made me unjustifiably jealous of those born with a talent for it. After all, Would not reading about Paul Erdös and watching A Beautiful Mind make anyone dream of being a genius. I postulate that it would not. Reading about great athletes does not make me wish to be one. Nor does reading about great authors or poets. But reading about great mathematicians (or physicists, who are basically mathematicians) makes me fill with envy and sorrow, even hatred of the unjust God that made me so inept at the thing which I so respect.

Perhaps I could abandon these pretensions of greatness, and I could truly become great in a field for which I do have natural talent. I think not. After all, my father raised me in his image, and he is, by training, a mathematician. I do not think that I can, this late in my life, abandon my upbringing and force myself to reject my unnatural leanings towards subjects at which I cannot excel.

So to draw and analogy from the sports that fail to captivate me as math does: I am forever damned to be the pathetic couch potato who watches all the games on television, but is to fat and inept to play himself. And I am cursed to be sentient of this fact, which  - in his ignorance - the aforementioned couch potato ignores (and is blissful).

I am again being drawn a conclusion that I have made before at countless moments in my life: I am going to die a broken and unhappy man.

(**On the other hand, at I least I will not have spent my life completely alone. Any time prior to about six months ago, this train of thought would have sent me spiraling into a depression of unfathomable deepness. However, I am now able to balance my intellectual disappointment with my emotional satisfaction. This keeps my afloat, and makes my life bearable. (In case there are lingering doubts, my life in high school was unbearable. Only my desire to accomplish something later in life prevented me from doing the unthinkable.) In any case, thank you, Ilona (if you are reading this), for keeping me sane, even when fate - be it God or random chance - seems to be conspiring to make me lose it. I am indebted to you forever.**)