kevin mitnick

I have always been fascinated by the concept of hackers. (I here refer to hackers in the malignant connotation of the word.) To me, the whole idea of pure knowledge and cleverness being able to outsmart an entire corporation is incredibly intriguing.

Admittedly, there are so many ways one can hack into a system that even if thousands of ways are protected, only one way is needed to get in. So hacking can almost be easier than protecting the system in the first place.

But the idea of lone computer genius is very appealing. Fascinating. Sometimes morally dubitable. But eye-catching anyway, regardless of the ethics of it all.

Kevin Mitnick seems personable. I wonder if he used a ghost writer for his book, or if he comes across that natural by himself.

It's cases where I know I'm too interested and admiring of the talent involved where I know I can't make a moral judgment by myself. So, it's probably wrong. Probably bad. But I am so drawn to brilliance, so often like moth to a flame, that I find his story too interesting to judge.

To the professors - why did you intentionally list his story before the TakeDown excerpt? It biased us - at least me - in his favor.

economics

I was really excited to read about economics for today. I've wanted to take Econ 110 for a while now (sometimes I need to take a class in order to make myself learn it) and having an intro to some of the thought is great!

My second brother, who is currently 14, is vehemently against Keynesian economics. As I understand it, Keynesian economics promotes government intervention in the economic system because as Keynes (and/or his promoters) believes, the economic system is inherently unstable, and the government is not. Therefore, stability needs to be added to the economic system of a country from the government itself in order to maintain order.

I found it interesting that in the reading, it mentions how this seemed to work very effectively around the time of Keynes, back in the time of the Great Depression and going into WWII. Of course, since the economy was so poor at this point, many people jumped on board and supported this philosophy. However, as the economy got better overall, people began to see the poor consequences of sticking solely to this strategy over the long-term - the government began to lose its economic stability as it became increasingly in debt, and thus is beginning to lose its own economic stability.

My personal, naive, and uneducated opinion is that a mixture of economic philosophies is often what's best to maintain economic stability. In each different situation, people are going to behave differently, and thus it's hard to use one algorithm to keep the economy constant or improving. This is what makes economics so difficult for government to agree upon!

unsolvable?

I'm not sure whether it should be reassuring to me or not that there are well-defined yet unsolvable problems.

In my electricity and magnetism class right now, we run into a number of difficult problems. We learn techniques to solve a few cases, and I kept hoping that there were general techniques we could use to solve ALL of them...

But I guess today's topic really demonstrates that there aren't. Oh goodness.

what the frick, photoshop?

That last picture is what gets me. I am so flipping curious as to the algorithm they use to come up with what ought to be there, when it's not a simple elaboration on what was already there.

(I was blog-hopping and took this from a blog of a BYU student whom I don't know. His blog is here.)

the rites of spring

Now, I don't know much about ballet, but I suppose I do know enough to see how this caused riots back in the day:



They say both the composer and choreographer were distraught that it was received so poorly, but at least one critic liked it. (Check out the Wikipedia article. P.S. this was early 1900s, everyone.)

(And, interestingly, it's remembered now for its innovative music, but the riots were over the choreography. FYI, this clip tries as best as it can to replicate the original choreography. I guess what the choreographer should have dwelt on was that it had supporters (in addition to opponents), hence the fighting? And that people felt so strongly about it, isn't that something choreographers go for?)

Now, perhaps unbeknownst to you - were you aware of what you were watching, actually? Mostly I got that there were a bunch of Native Americans dancing around - there are elders and groups of guys and girls, and it's probably a ritual, and the ritual aspect was apparent from the title.

Well, P.S., that was a fertility ritual! Yeah, don't your innocent eyes feel a little weird now? And the basic premise of this ballet (I looked all this up after I'd watched the clip) is the preparation of a girl being sacrificed to bring the gods' benevolence for the coming spring.

Now that we all feel enlightened, comment on my post!

a compilation

This is a condensed version of the outside work I did for the reading today (the fact that there was little required reading left me time to explore):

Luxo Jr Watch it. Love it. Crave it. (Oh wait, craving satisfied - Pixar has since done a number of excellent movies and shorts. Way to start off right!)

Who is Nietzsche? (Also, Stanford wrote it and I like that university)

I am such a big fan of this. I can see this working really well at a physics conference - at least, that's how I wished it worked, I feel that I'm a lot better at spontaneous speaking and explanation than a prepared speech, especially when I'm familiar with a topic.

And then I learned about T.S. Eliot. I liked this quote particularly:

"...he has followed his belief that poetry should aim at a representation of the complexities of modern civilization in language and that such representation necessarily leads to difficult poetry."

That biography was written by the Nobel committee. I wondered what a Nobel Prize in Literature meant, and so I found out:

"...in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, [the author has] produced 'in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction'" (thank you wikipedia)

Like many of you, I am sure, I wondered who Wassily Kandinsky was, but that's basically what the Internet is here for, to tell us all about things we never knew existed. 

Source

Source
I mean, you know, no biggie, the father of modern art or something. THAT hasn't influenced anything over the years.
I'm personally generally a much bigger fan of realistic art rather than the abstract variety, but this stuff doesn't grate on me (Picasso definitely does), in fact I would even be OK with it in a hotel, so I feel morally OK posting this.

There you go! Those are the things I explored today! It was exciting.

Being Mormon

Today I just felt like posting quotes.

Perhaps now, more than ever, we have a major responsibility as Latter-day Saints to define ourselves, instead of letting others define us.

Source

If the adversary cannot entice us to misuse our physical bodies, then one of his most potent tactics is to beguile you and me as embodied spirits to disconnect gradually and physically from things as they really are. In essence, he encourages us to think and act as if we were in our premortal, unembodied state.

Source

1. Does the use of various technologies and media invite or impede the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost in your life?

2. Does the time you spend using various technologies and media enlarge or restrict your capacity to live, to love, and to serve in meaningful ways?

Source

These quotes demonstrate a focus on nature and becoming our best self - focusing on what we are meant to be, but not letting ourself be entirely free. We are intended to evaluate ourselves, see what we naturally are, and become the best of that that we can be. This represents some Enlightenment and Romantic ideals. There's some semblance of transcendentalism, which I remember discussing in high school, but the Mormon church came just after the Enlightenment era and many of those ideals show up in teachings. The Enlightenment provided a good setting for these ideals to take root among the populace, so more people would be prepared for LDS teachings to come their way.