On the math problem from last time, a reader writes:

C - S + S((S-1)/S)^C

Which is lovely, and I suspect also correct.

Think about it first in the case where C=S. Imagine that all of the cards are sitting in the slots on the table, one to a slot. The number of not-on-the-felt cards here is zero, of course. If we want to raise that number to one, we take a card from some slot that has exactly one card in it, and put it into another occupied slot; that will leave one slot empty. If we then want to raise it to two, we have to move another card that's all by itself in a slot (moving the card that's already on some other card will either leave the count at one or put it back to zero). If we do move another lone card to a still-occupied slot, there will now be two not-on-the-felt cards, and two empty slots.

And in general every time we want to raise the number of not-on-the-felt cards, we also have to raise the number of empty slots by the same amount. So the number of not-on-the-felt cards is the number of empty slots. And what is the expected number of empty slots? Well that we can figure out!

The probability that a given slot will be empty is just the probability that every card goes into some other slot. The probability that any particular card goes into some other slot is (S-1)/S (if there are ten slots, the probability that the next card dealt will go into some slot other than slot five, say, is 9/10). Since the probabilities here are independant, the probability that all of the cards will go into other slots, leaving this slot empty, is ((S-1)/S)^C (S minus one over S, to the C).

Since there are S slots, the expected number of empty slots is exactly S times that probability, or S((S-1)/S)^C. (I worry that I'm overlooking some assumption here, but if I am it doesn't seem to be an important one.)

Now that was all for the C = S case. I haven't quite convinced myself that the solution is right for the C ≠ S case, but here's the argument: If C is larger than S (you have more cards than slots), then at least (C-S) cards must be in non-empty slots, so you can imagine yourself starting with at least one card in each slot and the rest wherever you like, and then continue the argument above. If C is smaller than S (fewer cards than slots), at least (S-C) slots will always be empty, so imagine starting with every card in a slot by itself, with (S-C) already empty, and again continue the argument above.

Yeah, I think that works. *8)

So thank you very extremely, treasured reader! I'll have to think about whether I can actually use that in the actual larger problem that I'm actually working on, even.

(By the by, I fixed a typo in the previous entry, where I had a "C to the power S" that should have been "S to the power C".)

Oh, and note that the Kind Reader's solution does have, in the C = S case, S^S in the denominator, as prophesied: in that form it's S((S-1)^S) over S^S. And if we evaluate S((S-1)^S) for our test cases, it turns out to be zero for 1, 2 for 2, and 24 for 3, also as expected! The exact solutions for 12 and 24 turn out to be closer to 4.224 and 8.642 than the 4.225 and 8.644 that I got from simulation; I wonder if I have a bug somewhere, hm....

So that has made me smile!

"At one time," the turtle said in didactic tones, "a solar-powered flashlight was considered a sort of oxymoron, an obviously-useless gadget: a light that works only in sunlight.

"But in reality a solar-powered flashlight charges its batteries in the sun, and later uses those batteries to provide light in the dark, and is thereby useful. Now that solar power is no longer an oddity, we have stopped basing jokes around misunderstanding it.

"One could argue that the useful device is not actually a solar-powered flashlight, but instead a battery-powered flashlight coupled to a solar-powered battery charger. But the result of packing together a solar-powered battery charger and a battery-powered flashlight simply is in fact a solar-powered flashlight. There is no alterntive."

I thought of that this morning on the drive to work for some reason. I don't know why it ended up being a turtle saying it. How would a turtle hold a flashlight (solar-powered or not)? In his litle jaws, perhaps. Or maybe this turtle has opposable thumbs.

Then we could talk about how much sense it makes to talk about a turtle with opposable thumbs. Would that still be a turtle? Why or why not? Is not having opposable thumbs more or less central to being a turtle than is, say, being unable to speak? Or not understanding the concept of solar power?

This is really good. ]]> http://www.davidchess.com/words/log.20090529.html#20090602 So imagine you have a deck of C cards, and on the felt in front of you there are S card-shaped slots or spaces drawn. Now you deal each of the C cards, at random, into the S slots; you place each card into a randomly-chosen slot, paying no attention to whether or not there is already a card in the slot (if there is, you just put the new card on top of it). So the first card that you put down always goes into an empty slot, but the second and the rest of the C cards can go into either an empty slot or one that already has one or more cards in it.

The question is: how many cards are (on average) on top of another card, rather than directly on the felt?

Express your answer in terms of C and S, natch.

If you're in a hurry, you may consider only the cases where C = S (or where c==s, for you programmer types).

In the trivial case where C = S = 1, the answer is zero (the one card will always be sitting there on the felt in the one slot). For C = S = 2, we can look at all four possible cases and determine that the answer is 0.5; half the time the cards will be in two different slots (so the answer is zero) and half the time they'll be in the same slot (so one card will not be on the felt, and half of one is 0.5).

We can easily solve ("solve") this problem in specific small cases by writing a little Perl script or whatever that deals cards at random and counts. For instance for C = S = 12 the answer is around 4.225, and for C = S = 24, it seems to be around 8.644. (Running the program for C = S = 3 suggests that if we were willing to think through all the possible cases there, we'd find the answer was 8/9.)

But what is, y'know, the answer? The closed-form solution? It's gotta be a rational number, and the bottom of the fraction is the number of possible ways to deal the cards, C to the power of S (or when C = S, C to the power C). The top of the fraction is, in all those possible ways of dealing the cards, the total number of cards (just counting up after laying down each deal) that aren't directly on the felt. But that latter number I don't have any clever clue on how to figure out in closed form. For 1, 2, and 3 the numbers are 0, 2, and probably 24.

We could write another program that would exhaustively go through all the cases, and it would be able to tell us the exact number for 4 and 5 and 6; even at 6 there are less than fifty thousand cases, so it wouldn't take too long. Seven to the seventh is getting up toward a million, ten to the tenth is of course ten to the tenth, and for C = S = 24, we probably wouldn't be willing to wait for the answer.

But if someone could write down a nice simple formula... *8)

(That problem came from thinking about a problem at work; but the work problem has enough extra parts that I'm pretty sure no closed-form answer is going to present itself, and there are far too many cases for a program to look at each one, so I am writing the simulation program.)

And here is a picture of Spennix fishing!

Doesn't that look idyllic? That's part of a whole set of recentish Spennix adventures that you can catch up with over on the secret Second Life weblog.

In other news, the little daughter is in a Distant Foreign Land, but we talked to her over "Skype" (funny names these kids come up with, eh?) on the computer, and we could actually see each other, and it was also free.

Pretty weird.

I'm glad I'm not an international long-distance company right now.

("Hm, so I can pay through the nose per minute for a voice-only phone call, or I can get voice and video free over the internet; hmmm, decisions decisions...")

And I'm sure there's other stuff going on *8) but it's getting late and distractions threaten to pull me away from the ol' weblog here and if I wanna get this posted tonight (and I do!), I'd better. So off we go!

Sleep well. ]]> http://www.davidchess.com/words/log.20090515.html#20090518 I'm rereading Dune, for the first time in quite awhile, and I love it as usual, and it bothers me as usual, and sitting on this train looking out the window at the night I'm thinking about why it bothers me, and why some other books, some other stories, also bother me.

It's deeply comforting, in some way, if also potentially terrifying, to think that there is some grand superhuman plan guiding the universe. We like telling stories about grand plans that underlie what happens, that explain or justify what happens.

But one reason stories like that bother me is that it's not true. There is no rumpled fabric of the future, already laid out if sometimes obscure, for Paul Muad'dib to guide the universe through. There is no inherent "need" in humanity "to renew its scattered inheritance, to cross and mingle and infuse their bloodlines in a great new pooling of genes."

And there is no anthropomorphic Deity with a Salvation Plan for humanity, and there is no ancient prophecy playing itself out in world events, and there is no Great Dialectic guiding culture toward a Great Hegelian Synthesis, and there is no inevitable triumph of economic system A over economic system B.

There is just us, doing whatever we choose to do. And there is no one else, at all, to lay the burden on.

Which is wonderful and liberating, and also terrible and immobilizing.

And true.

I like to believe things that are true. Believing things that aren't true tends to get me into trouble, tends to limit my ability to accomplish that I want to accomplish.

It's okay, in general, if you believe things that aren't true; I don't consider myself to have any say over what you believe and don't believe. I like to talk with people who also like to believe true things, because we can work together to figure out what's true and what's not, and that way I come to believe more true things, and am thereby able to get even better at doing things I want to do. But I also like to talk with people who believe untrue things, and who either don't really want to or aren't very good at figuring out which things are true and which aren't, because that can be interesting too.

And people who believe things that aren't true can be very nice, even if they aren't particularly interested in believing truer things. I just feel sort of sorry for them sometimes, because they will not be as good at doing what they want to do. In general.

Various many things have been happening, many of them smallish. I have yet another onlay installed on one of my teeth ("teeth"), and Spennix has nearly enough gold to learn the highest level flying skill, so as to be able to fly very fast flying things rather than just ordinary flying things. The little daughter and the little boy are both finishing up their first years at their respective institutions of learning, which is not smallish at all in some sense.

I'm approaching a scarily round-numbered birthday (I will be 20, haha; in the sense that last year I turned 1o), and thinking about buying myself a snazzy high-powered gaming laptop for WoW and Second Life. Any recommendations? I'm looking at Alienware (even though Dell or someone owns them now); would I just be paying extra for a fancy name? Is a Macbook Pro at all plausible? They are pricey too.

Why do you do what you do? What moves you, motivates you?

When I was younger I founded a whole school of philosophy around the premise and/or discovery that everything everyone does is motivated by pleasure. I think I realized even at the time that this is true only if you define "pleasure" to mean "anything that motivates anything anyone does", but it was still fun.

If you gave someone a promise of enough food and clothing and shelter and warmth for the rest of their lives, and a really good neural orgasmatron, would they ever come out? Lots of stories have addressed that question, of course. Would I ever come out?

How much of what shapes what I do is the result of my own personality and preferences acting on the necessity to obtain food and clothing and shelter and warmth, rather than my own personaltiy and preferences expressing themselves beyond that necessity? Which is to ask, I guess, whether the higher levels of ol' Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs are the things that you worry about once you've got the bottom levels all secure, or whether they are just side-effects of our constant attempts to get the bottom levels even more secure?

Or maybe those are just two ways of saying the same thing.

So let's see. I'm on the train and the train doesn't have an Internet connection (imagine!) so I can't look up the details, but the other day on NPR I heard a disturbing pair of stories:

First story was about a bunch of assholes (NPR unfortuantely didn't use the word "assholes") who had gassed a girls' school because their interpretation of their religion's rules told them that girls should not be educated in schools (but apparently that it was okay to gas girls).

Second story was about the Pope visiting Jerusalem or somewhere, and giving a speech about how Jews and Christians and Muslims should all band together against the great modern evils of secularism and "moral relativism", regardless of their differences on particular doctrines.

He was, that is, putting himself squarely in the camp of the assholes who gassed the girls' school (who have a good solid absolute non-secular moral code, even if he might disagree with their particular doctrine and methods), and against, say, the girls and their parents, who maybe thought it would be a good idea for the girls to be educated and have better lives, in a relative and secular sort of way.

And I really gotta wonder how people like that can really think that they are doing good.

I've been getting involved in the occasional flamewar over in Second Life Weblog Land, and although (or because?) I do get too heavily invested in the personalities sometimes, I've been learning some things about myself.

Two things that really bother me seem to be (A) people who are very sure of themselves when they are either wrong or at least unjustified in their certainty, and (B) people who are mean.

My being so bothered by (A) is something that I think I need to work on.

People, some people, like to be certain, like to sound certain, like to be condescending toward those who are less certain, or who question their certainty. But as long as they aren't hurting anyone or anything by that certainty, however factually mistaken it might be, it should not make me writhe and wince and feel compelled to post things on the web and either get them to See The Light and by Crom admit that they were wrong, or at least make such a strong case that all onlookers realize that I Am Right (even if what I'm right about is just "you don't really know that") and They Are Wrong (about either the fact or their degree of certainty in it).

It's good to wade in and have a good Frank Exchange of Views in order to sharpen my own knowledge, and test my own beliefs, with an eye toward believing more true things and fewer false things (see discussion there above somewhere). But when I get all emotionally invested, and feel compelled to stay in the battle beyond the point where I'm satisfied that my belief is true, trying to get to the point where they admit it and publicly acknowledge my rightness, that's silly, and potentially unhealthy, and even obnoxious, and I shouldn't do that.

My being so bothered by (B) on the other hand is something that I like. People shouldn't be mean, and if I can get in there and campaign for non-meanness and perhaps cause some people to be nicer than they would have otherwise, preferably by example, I think that's a good thing. That's one of the things that I hope believing various true things can help me accomplish. *8)

There were other things I was thinking I ought to write in my weblog (but then going and posting in my Second Life weblog, or playing WoW, or starting up SL, or going to sleep, instead). But none of them spring to mind at the moment.

Oh, here's a link in my "stuff to log someday maybe" collection: The Great Brazilian Sat-Hack Crackdown. If that article is still at that URL you might want to read it; it was pretty interesting. I would have thought that communication sattelites would have had some sort of protection that would prevent people from bouncing their own private signals off of them, but apparently not. I guess it would be hard to do, in the analog realm there, without hurting latency or bandwidth or something?

Hm.

My iPod is playing "Stewball" (Peter, Paul & Mary). And now it's playing "Parasol", from Tori Amos, "The Beekeeper". And in a minute or three it will be playing something else.

How are you? We haven't talked in awhile.

I like sitting here and writing down words. It's dark outside (because it's nighttime), and the wheels of the train are pushing the world backward, or vice-versa, outside the window. I don't know when I'll post this; I'm not sure if the hotel will have a good network connection, or if I'll feel like posting this before I go to sleep. It'll probably be tomorrow by the time I post it regardless, but that's okay.

Oh! I had a bit over an hour between trains, in New York's Penn Station, so I wandered up and out (something street and something avenue in Manhattan), and got a hot pretzel (omg so salty!) and a hotdog (perfection) and a bottled water from a cart person, and gave a dollar to a nice guy who asked me for a dollar (he was going to get some chicken, he said), and I sat on the stairs of this really enormous building that they have down there (a Post Office, I think, for mail and stuff, but really really big, bigger than you're probably thinking), and I ate my food and drank my bottled water and watched the people walking (and bicycling and scootering) by, and watched the cars and trucks and taxis (many many many taxis) driving by (presumably most of them with people in them, behind the windows), and that was really lovely.

And then I crossed the street and got an Italian Ice at a pizza place, and the two Italian guys behind the counter and the big ebony guy ahead of me at the counter and I talked a little bit about television stations, Telemundo and Univision and this one station that has lots of stuff from India.

"Big Bollywood dance numbers?" I asked.

"Yeah, lots of 'em."

"I love those."

I used to be sort of afraid of The City, oppressed by it, but lately I've come to love it, it and the idea of it, so full of people and their clothes and bicycles and the signs that they put up, and the pizza places and all the places that sell The Best Cup of Coffee in New York, and all the windows there are that someone might be looking out of. It's an amazing place.

Now Candy From Strangers is singing "Lucky Charms" from the album "Candy From Strangers". Which is probably appropriate.

But then what isn't, really?

I was going to end right there, 'cause of that sounds nice and profound and all, but then I thought that since we haven't talked in so long and it's so nice sitting here and typing I should be more polite.

So good night!

Sweet dreams.

Thank you. *8) ]]> http://www.davidchess.com/words/log.20090424.html#20090424 Today we have various Found Texts (for a change heh heh).

Enough is Enough: A Thinking Ape's Critique of Trans-Simianism
...
Klomp predicts that through a technology called "hygiene" we could extend the simian lifespan well into the late 20s or possibly 30s. What exactly will the post-simian do with all that time? Do we really want to live in a society populated by geriatric 27-year-olds? In living so long and spending so much time "thinking," do we not also run the risk of becoming a cold, passionless race incapable of experiencing our two emotions (fear and not fear)? How much of our simianity are we willing to sacrifice for this notion of progress?

From an old input box:

lachs
zen
sorry, thought that was a search bar.

And in the even more venerable Third Anniversary Poll:

What do you like best about this site?
OxmfXQEAhj
What do you like least?
uBbyjFIVns

More recently, What's up? (or perhaps, What was up in January?).

Will you ever post again? Will any of us?

lovers embracing by a fountain OF BLOOD

Turns out that I will! And we will! Not sure about that blood, though; haven't played Doom for some time.

What's behind you? Well,

the couch

of course!

We have consensus on World Record for:

situps
SIT UPS

And presumably an Omegle:

Stranger: hi

You: hi

Stranger: asl?

You: no idea what that means

Stranger: age sex location

You: if you're asking me that, then we can't have anything to talk about. Take it easy.

You have disconnected.

I had one of those. Being in a similar mood I was ruder and just said "haha!" before disconnecting. *8)

Found elsewhere:

Now, I have put an end to the interrogation techniques described in those OLC memos, and I want to be very clear and very blunt. I've done so for a simple reason: because I believe that our nation is stronger and more secure when we deploy the full measure of both our power and the power of our values -- including the rule of law. I know I can count on you to do exactly that.

There have been some conversations that I've had with senior folks here at Langley in which I think people have expressed understandable anxiety and concern. So I want to make a point that I just made in the smaller group. I understand that it's hard when you are asked to protect the American people against people who have no scruples and would willingly and gladly kill innocents. Al Qaeda is not constrained by a constitution. Many of our adversaries are not constrained by a belief in freedom of speech, or representation in court, or rule of law. I'm sure that sometimes it seems as if that means we're operating with one hand tied behind our back, or that those who would argue for a higher standard are naïve. I understand that. You know, I watch the cable shows once in a while. (Laughter.)

What makes the United States special, and what makes you special, is precisely the fact that we are willing to uphold our values and our ideals even when it's hard, not just when it's easy; even when we are afraid and under threat, not just when it's expedient to do so. That's what makes us different.

So, yes, you've got a harder job. And so do I. And that's okay, because that's why we can take such extraordinary pride in being Americans. And over the long term, that is why I believe we will defeat our enemies, because we're on the better side of history.

So don't be discouraged by what's happened in the last few weeks. Don't be discouraged that we have to acknowledge potentially we've made some mistakes. That's how we learn. But the fact that we are willing to acknowledge them and then move forward, that is precisely why I am proud to be President of the United States, and that's why you should be proud to be members of the CIA. (Applause.)

The vast majority of the family's 2008 income is the proceeds from the sale of the President's books. The Obamas paid $855,323 in federal income tax.

From politics in/of Academia:

The Human Rights Campaign discovered, and subsequently announced on its website, that NOM's "ordinary people" were in fact actors, who auditioned for the roles of concerned professionals terrified of the impending apocalyptic storm. The Anscombe Society's members -- or, indeed, the staff of the Tory, or the members of the College Republicans or Princeton Pro-Life, because there is considerable overlap between the organizations -- are most certainly real people, but their status as grassroots is called into question by Professor George's involvement in their lives and their organizations as well as in political affairs that at least lie north of the campus border.

And from the iPod, Matmos "Spondee":

Sunshine
Lunchbox
Playground
Raincoat
Hot dog
Oatmeal
Railroad
Ice Cream
Bathtub
Pancake
Eardrum

Sunshine! ]]> http://www.davidchess.com/words/log.20090417.html#20090422 So I am on this train, a train that goes from somewhere in or near Washington, D.C., to (at least) Pennsylvania Station in New York City. When I got on the train, the conductor lady told everyone going in the door that I was going in that this car is the Quiet Car, and no cell phones or long conversations are allowed. And on the ceiling there are signs hanging down at each end of the car, saying that this car is the Quet Car, and no loud talking or cell phones are allowed. And as the conductor lady checked overyone's ticket, she told every person seated in the car that this car is the Quiet Car. And the lady in the seat ahead of me said "does that mean we can't use cell phones?" and the conductor lady said yes, that's what it means, and if the lady wants to use her cell phone, there are two other cars in that direction that she can move to.

I like the Quiet Car. *8)

So as we're pulling out of the station the lady in the seat ahead of me calls someone on her cell phone and leaves a message, saying that she's on the train, and she's running a little late because mumble, and she just wanted to let you know.

And then a little later as I'm falling pleasantly asleep in the Quiet Car the lady in the seat ahead of me's cell phone rings loudly, and she answers it and begins a long conversation about how this person has been visiting this other person, and she talked to this third person who she hasn't spoken to in years, and you know how it is when someone is in that sort of circumstances, and really it's hard to believe.

And about fifteen minutes later, when we're pulling out of another station, and the lady in the seat ahead of me is still chatting merrily away, the conductor lady goes by, and the man in the tie in the seat across the aisle from me catches her eye and sort of nods at the lady in the seat ahead of me, and the conductor lady goes up, and leans over, and says very definitely "I'm sorry, ma'am."

And I figure she's going to make the lady in the seat ahead of me stop using her cell phone, and she does do that, but she also makes her get up, and leave the car ("I'm sorry ma'am, but I need you out of here, we had this conversation earlier.") Which I thought was sort of amusingly harsh, but also gratifying.

Silly lady.

Did you know Baltimore has a Pennsylvania Station also? How confusing!

I wonder if there is a Pennsylvania Station in Pennsylvania.

I am writing this on the train (as you may have deduced), and on the train there is no network connection, and my computer and my cell phone are not clever enough to produce one (I suppose using my cell phone that way in the Quiet Car would be okay, since it would be quiet), so I don't know when I'll be posting this. Given when various trains are supposed to arrive in various places and all, it might not be until technically Thursday (or if I decide I'm sleepy when I get home it might not be until actually Thursday), but that's okay. It's Wednesday now.

Looking through my "to record in the weblog someday maybe" files, I come across a very good example of the Law of Unintended Consequences.

Part of the problem, Green said, is that the government has changed the money so much to foil counterfeiting. With all the new bills out there, citizens and even many police officers don't know what they're supposed to look like.

I had this same thought last time I took this train trip, in fact; at one or more stages of the trip some ticket-device gave me in change some round metal coin-like things with pictures of United States Presidents on one side, and like an eagle or something plausible like that on the other, with words on them claiming that they are worth one dollar. I had never heard of any such coin in circulation, but hey they're chaning the money all the time these days, so who knows?

Later on I looked them up, and they turn out to be real! But really, how can one be sure?

Notice: this machine gives change in the new "square pieces of cardboard with 'One Doller' written on them in crayon" coins.

Sure, okay, whatever... ]]> http://www.davidchess.com/words/log.20090417.html#20090420 Today we present just a Mark Aster classic, which for some reason I found myself thinking of this morning.

Spendthrift

She has the most valuable thing in the world. Right now, she's got it in her right front pants pocket.

I don't begrudge her having it; she deserves it if anyone does. But I wish she'd take better care of it. It pains me to watch her, sometimes, casually showing it to her friends, juggling it idly between her palms as she stands in the bus station talking into the payphone. Once she almost left it behind on a table in some bar. A guy sitting at the next table noticed it, picked it up, handed it to her. "Oh, thanks," she said. How could she even let him touch it?

The worst was last night, big party at Jamison's, and at the height of it I saw her, probably drunk, hilarity burning around her, writhing through the crowd and clapping to the music with her hands over her head. Then she took it out of her pocket and started to break off little pieces of it! It was awful. She handed one to the boy who'd brought her to the party, pressing it into his palm. She gave another one to some sweaty stranger dancing next to her, needing a shave, probably smelly and illiterate, maybe homicidal. Just gave him a piece of it, like it was a nacho. Another piece she slipped between her lips and shifted around with her tongue. I thought my heart would break.

I sat down next to her later on, in a lull, determined finally to say something to her.

"Shouldn't you be more careful with that?" I said, unable to think of any way to make my case more subtly, "It's the most precious thing in the world."

She looked at me, her eyes a little red, her face a little sweaty, shiny, so alive. She started to say something, stopped, shook her head. "You can really be a jerk," she said. But she smiled.

The secret other-words weblog has more recent updates on the doings of Dale and Spennix and associates; The doings of ordinary atomic-world David are not nearly as well chronicled lately.

M is just back from a few days visiting a friend up North. We have a new little round oak table in the living room (replacing a rather battered-by-now white Ikea thing), discovered on sale cheap at some northern antique store. We have had take-out from the local BBQ place, and are lying around typing; M is catching up with days worth of email and Google Reader and IMing the college girl, the little boy is writing a paragraph for Spanish, and I am writing in this here weblog.

I had a bottle of Anchor Steam with dinner; my doctor says I should have a drink a day for the sake of my blood pressure or cholesterol or something. I usually stick to Bailey's Irish Cream or some other sweet liqueur, because the sweetness masks the taste of the alcohol, but once in awhile I like a microbrew. (More for the fun names than the taste; most alcohol tastes like lighter fluid to me, which I really regret sometimes, given all the interesting culture surrounding booze.)

Isn't that fascinating? *8)

On the Omegle phenomenon mentioned last time, here's Robot Stranger dot com, a site that shows the results of setting what looks like a rather slapdash Bayesian generator loose on Omegle. Not too fascinating so far, but the idea does appeal.

Metahumor 'o the Day: You've seen one or two or ten of those YouTube videos that put more or less amusing subtitles under the Hitler bunker scene from Der Untergang? Well here it is commenting on itself. Which is always worth a look.

Ironic Thoughtcrime o' the Day (well, o' the Day back in 1907): the Lamentabili Sane, which includes on the list of false propositions which are "condemned and proscribed":

57. The Church has shown that she is hostile to the progress of the natural and theological sciences.

You are prohibited from thinking that you are prohibited from thinking!

Heartwarming Robot Stories o' the Day: Tweenbots.

Site with random and sometimes tasteless silly pictures o' the (hmm) Hour: Picture is Unrelated.

And finally a User Interface Quandary: we've been using Pandora dot com quite a bit lately ('cause it's free an' places music an' all), and on the Pandora dot com music player there's a button that has a "play" symbol on it, and also a "pause" symbol.

At any given time, one of these symbols is grey, and one is sort of dull orange or bright brown. The question is: does the colorful symbol represent the current state of the player, or does it represent what will happen if you push the button?

I've been using Pandora for a few weeks now, and I still can't remember.

Okay, let's check. Click, click. Apparently it represents the curent state of the player. So if it's playing, the "play" symbol will be bright, despite the fact that the button is actually a pause button. And if it's paused the "pause" symbol will be bright, even though the button is a "play" button.

I've seen other things like this, where there is a button that says "On" or "Off" depending on the state of the thing, and it's always very confusing. Either it says "Off" when the thing is on, and "On" when the thing is off, or you have to push a button that says "Off" to turn it on, and a button that says "On" to turn it off. Neither is very sensible.

The problem is that seeing what state the system is in now, and finding the device (the affordance!) to put it into a new state, are two different activities, and the same label can't really do both. (Well, the button could say "the system is now ON; click me to turn it OFF", or vice-versa, but that's a lota text.) So designers shouldn't do this, even if it does seem to save them screen real estate and visual complexity.

Is this a well-known UI faux pas, or did I just make it up? ]]> http://www.davidchess.com/words/log.20090403.html#20090405

Connecting to server...
You're now chatting with a random stranger. Say hi!
Stranger: hi
You: Hi, random stranger!
You: What is up?
Stranger: im playing poker right now
You: Kewl!
Stranger: about to get my ass handed to me
You: haha
You: With actual people, or online? Poker?
Stranger: online wiht fake people
You: Never draw to an inside straight.
Stranger: i try not to
Stranger: and i small ball alot
You: Know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em.
Stranger: like right now
You: Does Omegle enhance your pokering?
Stranger: no
You: haha
You: Distracting, I expect.
Stranger: yea
Stranger: and im playing for real chedder here
Stranger: want to play?
Your conversational partner has disconnected.

So yeah, I've been using Omegle, for no reason that I articulate yet. It's utterly fascinating to me; M finds it completely weird.

My first contact spoke only in Call of Duty 4 tournament jargon, which was interestingly novel. Then I had a several-minute conversation with (nominally) a twenty-year-old woman in Washington DC who was bored and filling out job applications; she gave me her AIM id at the end, which was fun (now I just have to figure out how to actually use AIM). Then someone from Brazil, with both of us sporadically using Google Translate to go between English and Portuguese. After that one I sent in Omegle feedback saying that they should totally integrate Google Translate into the site.

Apparently Omegle got lots of talking-up on Orkut, which is Google's social networking site that is heavily used in Brail; so yesterday at least most of the people on Omegle were Brazilians. This morning I talked briefly to (that poker player up there, and) a fifteen-year-old boy (young man?) in Finland.

The only person I've hung up on more or less right away was a person who said "hi asl" as the very first thing. I said "haha" and disconnected.

One person said "BIG COCKS" as their greeting, which was pretty funny. Eventually it turned out that I was Paris Hilton and they were Britney Spears, and we said some very silly things.

Another person posted a link to a silly YouTube video of some dance number (not Rick Astley), and them immediately disconnected.

I had one longish discussion of Omegle and programming languages and Italian opera and stuff with someone two timezones to the West of me. That was fun, and probably the one that I most would have liked to get some contact information from that I didn't. The whole thing about whether or not to share, or to want to share, identity information is a really fascinating aspect that I don't have anything profound to say about yet.

So it's very very wild and strange. And it was started by an 18 year old high school senior!

I was about to write that I wonder if it'll stay simple and ad-free for very long, when I went to the homepage and noticed there are now a few text-ads over on the righthand side. I mentioned this to my next correspondant (interlocutor?).

Connecting to server...
You're now chatting with a random stranger. Say hi!
You: Ah, I see there's advertising on the homepage now! :)
Stranger: really?
You: Yeah, just a few little text ads on the righthand side.
You: Maybe he'll be a rich little 18-year-old soon. haha
Stranger: hey you're right
Stranger: do you like cheese?
You: I do!
You: Pirates, or ninjas?
You: ( mmmm cheese )
Stranger: ninjas
You: Ninjas are definitely in the lead so far.
You: What about chocolate?
You: versus cheese, say?
Stranger: thats because they are way cooler
You: Yeah, they are relatively awesome.
You: But Pirate culture has alot going for it.
You: There's no "talk like a ninja day".
Stranger: chocolate is the most halelujable thing in the world. did you know that?
You: I would have to consider agreeing.
You: That is quite a word!
You: Did you just make it?
Stranger: I guess XD
You: Smileys! ^_^
You: What kind of cheese?
You: ( Venezuelan Beaver Cheese? haha )
Stranger: it's offensive to you
but cheese cheers me up when I am blue
I dont know why, but a nice sharp cheddar
makes me feel a whole lot better!
Stranger: A limburger or emmentaler
makes me grin and jump and holler
and oh, the pleasure!
of a slice of cheshire!
You: I am writing this all down.
You: I am also very impressed that those words appear not to occur in Google anywhere. :)

The weblog comments suggest that there is considerable "trolling", but that's not very surprising, and is pretty much expected in such an anonymous environment. One thing that I haven't heard of or seen yet is Omegle-spam, which I would expect to become a significant problem if the site survives; it would be so easy to write a 'bot that would connect, send a URL, and disconnect (at first I suspected the interlocutor mentioned above of that, but the video that they linked me to didn't seem to be a revenue-generator for anyone so I suspect it wasn't that).

And of course there's the notion that Google will buy Omegle sometime soon. *8)

(See also a nice chat dot net, which seems to be exactly the same concept, but which for some reason hasn't gone as viral. It does have you enter a "nickname"; I wonder if that one droplet of non-anonymity makes a difference? Omegle went down at one point, and I went over to A Nice Chat and had a long talk about countries and the price of smoked salmon and stuff with someone in Belgium who was also there because Omegle was down. Funny!)

In other news, Spennix is level eighty! Which is pretty exciting, but doesn't actually change how she looks any, so I have no associated pictures. But Fan of Knives is pretty awesome! ]]> http://www.davidchess.com/words/log.20090320.html#20090326 Huzzah! I am hereby announcing that M has a weblog! It's all about the cool things that she and her colleagues do with things made of atoms, and it's full of fun atom-related jargon, like over-ones and 40ct Vintage Light Examplars, and NPI conversions. I can't take credit for her finally Seeing The Light; it was her various matter-manipulating colleagues who finally showed her that weblogs don't have to be incomprehensible (like mine, heehee).

So that's fun.

Other than that, I think I will mostly just post some spam! Here is some anti-Bayes text that a colleague at the Lab got the other week and sent me 'cause he liked it:

The hydrogen atom beyond a recliner brainwashes a formless void around the fruit cake, or a bartender slyly learns a hard lesson from some geosynchronous graduated cylinder. Now and then, a pickup truck of the cocker spaniel avoids contact with a microscope behind a buzzard. When a CEO beams with joy, a line dancer inside the freight train daydreams. For example, a cab driver indicates that the globule laughs and drinks all night with a paternal grain of sand. When you see a pickup truck about a garbage can, it means that the dust bunny of a fire hydrant hides.

Just as we were talking about it, I got this:

A wedge inexorably trades baseball cards with a mastadon. An ocean goes to sleep, and a hockey player seldom plans an escape from the blood clot behind the turn signal a satellite about a corporation. A paycheck eagerly finds subtle faults with the tripod. When an oil filter behind an anomaly is shabby, a plaintiff almost gives secret financial aid to a blood clot near the turn signal. A fat pine cone completely befriends a loyal mastadon.

Now while "When a CEO beams with joy, a line dancer inside the freight train daydreams" and "a paternal grain of sand" have a certain immediate appeal, it becomes all too obvious all too quickly that this is just someone running a small generative grammar with a random-number source, and there's no semantics of any kind behind it. So the novelty wears off quickly.

A few days later I got this:

Not that there are no other fish in the ocean upon whom I can sling my hook, but who can be like my dear Betsy that loves me with such generosity of heart? I love a hand that meets my own with a grasp that causes some sensation and which only your's can do. I love you not only because of beauty but for your sense of decency, delicacy, kindness and other complementary qualities. I can't help doting on you. Therefore all my gestures of love towards you come straight from the bottom of my heart, don't we?" Vera said: "How was it worked - that trick with the marble bear?"

A bit of googling about shows that this is part of a letter on some rather baffling "free love letters" site, segueing boldly into some dialog from Christie's "And Then There Were None". Clearly derivative, but especially right at the juncture there ("... from the bottom of my heart, don't we?") there's a nicely thrilling novelty, a frisson of surprise. And the marble bear dropping on us out of the blue is rather delightful. I don't know just what sort of algorithms were used to select the passages and splice them together; one can imagine all sorts of interesting Dissociated Press variants that might serve, and might have interestingly adjustable parameters in them. Snipping up the input texts a bit more finely, in particular, might increase the novelty (and/or reduce the coherency).

The former technique is a more obvious way of producing random but roughly convincing text; I wrote some programs like that in my youth, and they sometimes had funny results. The latter, if it really does belong to the Dissociated Press family in some significant way, is more random and uncontrolled, and informed by a different kind of information about actual language (more statistical and less structured), and tends to produce wilder and funnier, if often less grammatically correct, stuff.

Hey, how did I manage to analyze myself all the way out onto the end of this limb here? What a silly place to be!

In closing, M points us to The Guild, a story about (I gather, from having watched like two episodes) a bunch of WoW players and their real-life (if fictional) trials and tribulations, presented as a bunch of web videos each like three or four minutes long. Which might be just about right... ]]> http://www.davidchess.com/words/log.20090320.html#20090325

"We close our show tonight with a statement by President Obama that's been raising alot of eyebrows around Washington.

"Asked at a White House press conference why he had delayed before endorsing the public beheading of everyone associated with troubled mortgage giant AIG, here's what the President had to say:

"It took us a couple of days because I like to know what I'm talking about before I speak, you know?"

"With us now to discuss this is our morning show political analyst, Keith Lacuna. Hey there, Keith."

"Good evening, Chet."

"So, Keith, was this just a case of President Obama going off-script? Do you think we'll have a 'clarification' from the White House tomorrow?"

"No, Chet, I think he really means it."

"Really means it?"

"Yes, Chet."

"But isn't this the sort of thing that just feeds the idea that President Obama is elitist, and not really in touch with the American People?"

"Well, Chet..."

"I mean, aren't people more comfortable, and more used to, people on television just mindlessly repeating whatever appears on the teleprompter, under the control of the shadowy overlords who really run the country?"

"You know, Chet, on that I think it's error reading teleprompter input; file is in use by another process. Basically."

"A good point, Keith. But back to this remarkable statement by the President. Is there any precedent for this? Would this be the first time a President would know what he was talking about?"

"Not at all, Chet. While it was of course completely unheard of in the previous administration, you may remember that Bill Clinton would --"

"Sorry, Keith, that's Bill...?"

"Bill Clinton? President before George W. Bush?"

"Ah, right, right, the intern and the cigar and so on. Sorry, go ahead."

"Bill Clinton quite often knew what he was talking about."

"But didn't he have that, you know, sort of grin?"

"It's true President Clinton always looked as though he was telling a friendly little fib that we were all in on, but studies show that 84.7% of the time he in fact knew what he was talking about."

"Are there really studies that show that?"

"No, I just made that up 'cause it sounded good."

"Whew, you had me worried for a minute there! Ha ha."

"Ha ha ha!"

"Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!"

What I'm saying is that server-side solutions invariably lead to sinister necromantic cabals. ]]> http://www.davidchess.com/words/log.20090320.html#20090324

Oh man, take care! What does the deep midnight declare?

There ought to be a word, maybe a German word like "shaudenfreude", for when there's something that you'd like to do, and you keep not doing it, and the fact that you haven't done it for so long becomes one of the reasons for not doing it, at least partly because you feel guilty or at least regretful for not having done it for so long, and so just thinking about doing it is to that extent slightly unpleasant, and so you keep not doing it until somehow finally you do and then everything is fine again.

Like, say, posting to one's weblog. *8)

I think this is the longest I've gone without posting since I started the whole thing like back in 1999. But hey, that is a mere fact! And here we are.

I've been posting considerable (well, comparatively considerable) to the secret Second Life weblog, and playing lots of Second Life and World of Warcraft. Dale has a piece of art in a show ("Masks!") that's opening in SL this weekend, and Spennix just hit level 79 (just one more to go, woot!). This morning I went over to one of them HQ type locations to talk with a VP (very bright lady!) about Cloud Computing and all, and so I am wearing a shirt with buttons, and no nice cotton tee shirt (T-shirt) under it, and I am chilly brrrrrr.

Hold on a sec while I go change into like a flannel nightshirt, okay?

There! Much better. Flannel nightshirt, and flannel robe over it. And maybe I'll put on some water to boil.

Aperture Science: We do what we must, because we can.

That's from the brilliant closing theme to the game "Portal", a game that I still haven't played (because it wants over a gigabyte of free space to install, and the machine in the playroom hasn't had that much disk space free de longtemps), but of whose culture I am very fond.

And the song is stuck in my head.

You just keep on trying 'til you run out of cake.

Indeed!

So I had this clever idea of a thing to post here about Current Events, and while that was awhile back so it's not quite as Current anymore, still here it is:

So good news! Bernie Madoff, or someone superficially similar in appearance to Bernie Madoff, is behind bars! Justice is served!

It occurs to me to wonder, though, a few things, purely hypothetically.

How much would it cost to really convincingly fake one's own death? And if one had between seven and seventy billion (with a "b") dollars of stolen money around and was about to be caught, why wouldn't one?

How much would it cost to obtain someone bearing a superficial physical similarity to one, have that similarity artificially increased, and drug or coerce or incent or hypnotize that person into pretending to be one, or actually thinking that they were in fact one? Would it cost more than, say, five billion dollars?

And how much, while we're on the subject, would it cost to create and train an elite strike-force capable of swooping down out of nowhere on their radar-proof ornithopters, snatching one out of the clutches of the law while one is on the way to the slammer, and spiriting one away to (say) one's secret antarctic base? And how much are the authorities doing to prevent this sort of thing?

Just hypothetically.

"Still Alive" (the song above) is apparently by the brilliant Jonathan Coulton, who also did "Re: Your Brains". (See memorable WoW machinima version, to which I may have linked previously.)

Which is now (also?) stuck in my head.

Speaking of egregious random YouTube videos, It's a big ad! And relatedly (relatedly?) Extreme Sheep Herding (which is unfortunately some sort of Samsung ad, but what can ya do?).

So okay that's that. What else has been going on? Did you know the Internet broke briefly, back in February? A pretty neat story, really.

Thus for this event to have occurred at all, besides the bugs in the router software of two vendors, only a few percent of the ASes on the Internet could have possibly initiated the meltdown, but only if they had a careless operator and an obscure Latvian router with outdated software. How likely was that?

And the Geeks In Charge got it working again fast enough that no one really noticed. Or at least it didn't make the headlines.

Australia seems to be imposing secret government censorship on its citizens' network access, which is sort of odd for, you know, a non-totalitarian country. As the headlines put it, banned hyperlinks could cost you 11,000 dollars a day. And you can't find out which hyperlinks banned, unless of course you find the list on the network, which if you're in Australia you might have a hard time doing, since while the censorship was imposed to Protect the Children (won't anyone think of the children??), it has of course widened to include censoring information about the censorship itself, and about other things like it, and unless someone cuts its heads off soon, it will spread to censorship of anything the censors don't like. Which is why non-totalitarian countries don't do this kind of thng.

So good luck, Australia! Hope you get better soon.

And speaking of hydras whose heads need to be cut off soon, here is a very juicy story about election fraud via electronic voting machines, which everyone should read, so that next time someone says "oh sure the geeks are worried about it in theory, but it's never actually happened", you can say "um, well, in fact...".

And just to round things out, here's a story from the other direction, where little shoots of grass (grass mud horses, even) are pushing up through the grimy concrete of totalitarianism in China: the song of the grass mud horse.

And now it's late, and although I'm having fun writing in my weblog (hi!) I do want to duck into Second Life for a bit before I sleep, and I'm going to have to remember how to post this (my old Perl scripts got broken when I installed or upgraded Cygwin on this machine, so I have to issue arcane scp commands by hand) so it'll take awhile.

We'll close with a couple of lines from William Henry Davies (which we were reminded of by a silly Second Life pastiche).

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

Or, similarly, to sit and purr... ]]> http://www.davidchess.com/words/log.20090213.html#20090216 A reader who was kidding writes:

I was kidding about the eagles! Come back already!

What, morning already?

I am typing this somewhere in the northward wilds, in a place where the internet access, or at least the wireless internet access in the area of this cozy little rucksack on the floor, is spotty at best. But at least I am typing it!

Rather than doing other things that don't result in eventual weblog postings.

So what has been going on? I've been playing somewhat less Second Life, although still posting the occasional amusing adventure in the secret SL weblog.

I've been playing quite alot of World of Warcraft ("WoW"), somewhat contrary to expectations: even though Spennix has her flying machine and her special goggles, I didn't lose interest at all in the game; Northrend (the new area opened up in the latest expansion) turned out to interest me enough that I kept on playing; Spennix now has a couple more of the "Explored [area]" achievements, and also the "ten mounts" acheivement (she looks very amusing on her huge elek; pictures to follow on Flickr or somewhere before long I imagine). Only Spennix, though, pretty much; I don't seem interested in any of the other, lower-level characters. The Alliance ones would all just be doing stuff that Spennix mostly already did a long time ago, and so far none of the Horde ones have really caught me.

It's odd, or at least notable: even when (as really is always the case) there are lots of creative and interesting and enriching stuffs I could be doing, whenever I walk by the WoW computer the thought of sitting down and Spennixing around for a while (or a few hours) is generally very very tempting.

Mostly because it's so easy, I think. I'm lazy.

I blame the Winter. *8)

And speaking of addictive computer pursuits, this Penny Arcade item led us to this extremely lovely and fun small thing, and a bunch of related ones, of which the micro-RPG one is perhaps particularly noteworthy.

Whether because the spam filters have gotten better at blocking them, or the spammers have moved on to other techniques (or, likely, both), the amount and quality of Bayesian Spam Poetry we've been getting has decreased. Still, the occasional noteworthy one shows up; here's one:

Cloudless commonin summer months reach degrees. Family looked healthy, happy also remaining set. Feast parish procession followed mass honour!
Asks feel enough ready leave because last, week spent.
Pol aurelian tudual tudwal brieuc malo samson dol dolst.
Eggs savoury fillings usually galettes galetes.
Maine create lands loire occupies, northwest. Subject words dolmen, daol, table maen stone menhir.
Nearly anything sale buy! Arecider chistr francea mead wild, honey chouchenan.
Hinault born yffiniac henry vii quite. High price analysts split over. Moore eddie murphy mike myers. Stuff college when nobody knew. Trick submitting personal, financial or.
Tale lara croft tomb, cradle nagiaa bronx, pack beyond. Saints, few recognized catholic church! Lille addition, passengers vehicles freight. Land km, sq mi region. Demand april may executive addict dies marathon, game sirius!
Pricestips, networks pswiixbox pussycat dollsfree videostv.
Rockstanet proactiv solutionr systemlive life clear get system. Crash, los angeles timesfree resource sql server downloads trial. Visions, pcs intel nonprofit laptop per?

A bit of proto-Gaelic or something in there. Cloudless commonin summer months reach degrees. Because last, week spent.

Someone notes in the Talking Place that:

hullo. Teucer has revived your curvature of the earth nomic:

http://einos-nomic.blogspot.com/

which is pretty cool. I hope they have more time for it than I did. *8) I don't know if I'll even have time to play in it, although I really should.

Speaking of things seen on Penny Arcade, this is very funny. A beautifully consistent idiom. (Taken to the limit and beyond!)

This is pretty funny too. Of course the Onion usually is.

Less funny is the politicians spending more money than exists in the world in a more or less random manner, in hopes it will do some good, or at least make them look powerful and decisive.

"We're going to invest three hundred and fifty billion dollars in our nation's transporation infrastructure!"

"But we state governors say that it will take at least one trillion dollars to actually fix the problem!"

"Oh, yeah? Well, we're asking for a zillion dollars to save the nation's manufacturing sector!"

"That's nothing! We're going to spend two hundred million jillion dollars to rescue the economy!"

"Well, unless we spend eleventy zillion jillion fillion dollars before next Tuesday, civilization will come to an immediate end!"

"We're going to spend infinity dollars!!!"

"We're going to spend a million infinity!!!!"

"There's no such thing as a million infinity, stupid!!!!"

"Who are you calling stupid, stupid???"

"You, stupid!!!"

"Ah, you're a poop-head!!!!!"

Which is to say that, while I'm still very happy with the fact that President Obama (a phrase that still sometimes amazes me) is intelligent and well-spoken and humorous and so far doing some pretty good things, I'm quite disappointed to see that he seems to have bought wholeheartedly into the whole "it's so important that we instantly spend unthinkably large amounts of money to prevent the collapse of civilization, that we can't really stop to figure out whether or not it will actually help any" meme.

Obama and the Democrats also (as more than one libertarian type has pointed out) seem just as prone to using the economic crisis as an excuse to push through lots of their favorite legislative ideas as Bush and the Republicans were to use terrorism as an excuse to push through lots of theirs.

The fact that the Democrats just want to take my money, whereas the Republicans wanted to both take my money and tell me who I could sleep with, imprison me indefinitely on Presidential whim, invade random foreign countries, and so on, is something of an improvement, but still...

I'm sure there was other stuff I was intending to talk about next time I got the time and energy to write here, but it's not springing to mind at the moment. That's okay, though; maybe that will increase the chances of my posting again in the next week or two. *8) ]]> http://www.davidchess.com/words/log.20090116.html#20090122 So here's an odd thing that happened!

The other day I got to work and parked my car in the parking lot at work and went around and opened up the back to get out my briefcase, and got out my briefcase, and then when I reached up to close the back I happened to look down, and I noticed this like dark brown disk-shaped thing sitting on the edge just where the door comes down.

I stopped closing the back for a second, and reached down and picked it up.

It was an 1859 Canadian penny!

I smiled at it and closed the back and walked in to work, holding it up close to my eyes and squinting at it and how neat it was. I thought about what to do with it vaguely, and slipped it into my pants pocket, figuring that it'd be safe there and I wasn't about to spend it by accident since it was the size of a quarter and the color of a penny, and so clearly not any normal spendable coin.

And then when I got home that night I remembered it, and got the change out of my pocket to find it, and it wasn't there. There was a 1989 Canadian nickel, which is a completely different size and color.

And it wasn't in any of my other pockets, and I haven't seen it since.

And that's pretty strange!

Maybe I just dreamed that I found it in the first place (it does seem pretty unlikely).

Or maybe I spent it (but as what?).

Or maybe, as the little boy suggested, it transformed into the nickel (hey, you never know!).

Or maybe it slipped out of my pocket and is lurking around at work or in the house somewhere, waiting to surprise me.

Or something.

It's a funny world! ]]> http://www.davidchess.com/words/log.20090116.html#20090120

My fellow citizens:

I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors. I thank President Bush for his service to our nation, as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.

Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath. The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents.

So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans.

That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.

These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our land - a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights.

Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many.

They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America - they will be met. On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.

We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted - for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things - some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life.

For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.

For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn. Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.

This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions - that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.

For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act - not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.

Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions - who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them - that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works - whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account - to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day - because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.

Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control - and that a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous. The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our Gross Domestic Product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on our ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart - not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.

Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.

We are the keepers of this legacy. Guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort - even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We will begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people, and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan. With old friends and former foes, we will work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the specter of a warming planet. We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.

For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus - and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.

To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West - know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.

As we consider the road that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. They have something to tell us today, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages.

We honor them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service; a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves. And yet, at this moment - a moment that will define a generation - it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all.

For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent's willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends - hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

This is the price and the promise of citizenship.

This is the source of our confidence - the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.

This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed - why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.

So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled. In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:

"Let it be told to the future world...that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive...that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet [it]."

America. In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

Thank you. God bless you. And God bless the United States of America.