A personal testimony: Thinkers anonymous

We were driving back to school, and listening to a teenage punk band named Relient K. I had listened to this music before, and had carefully analyzed the lyrics of some of the more interesting songs, but hadn't come to any firm conclusions. Most elusive was the song Failure To Excommunicate. I had a pretty good start on it though: it had to be about how we as humans have preconceptions and how that globally causes biases which religiously discriminates...--but i just couldn't quite get it to fit.

Pondering now again, i finally commented on the elusive depth of the song to my traveling companion. Giving me a puzzled look, he asked me what i was talking about. When i tried to explain, amused, he scolded me, ``you over analyze everything! They are a teenage punk band! They are singing in complaint of their principal kicking them out of school!'' Thinking over the lyrics, how right he was, and how blind i was.

Thinking over this several days later, and his advice to not over analyze things, i started applying the same principals to other facets of my life where my analysis had, for the life of me, been failing.

In calculus we are trained how to write equations to model systems and then manipulate the equation in such a way as to maximize or minimize the system. In fact, that is what a lot of higher math is involved in, in one way or another.

Using the mathematical mindset, i'm always trying to analyze people so that i can maximize my interactions with them. And by maximizing i'm not suggesting trying to manipulate people to get whatever end i choose, that is rather low in my book. By maximizing i'm simply referring to having cohesive, meaningful, productive interactions with others; for the benefit of all involved parties.

So now i understood why all the brain power i could muster, trying to analyze and understand women, was constantly yielding no fruit--i was trying to over-analyze them! How could i have been so blind all along, to think that i could find a function that would map to a random number generator?

Amusing pages of what one fellow tried getting away with for purchase signatures: The Credit Card Prank.

RMS recently gave an interesting speech My Lisp Experiences and the Development of GNU Emacs. Interesting read, not only from the LISP perspective, but in understanding events leading up to his stance on software and licensing thereof.

Amusing and sometimes thought provoking: Epigrams in Programming.