On Love

The hallmark of love is the desire of the lover to sacrifice something they would otherwise want, for the benefit of the beloved, and to consider themselves better off on account of it.

Taxpayer-funded Playground

I spend a lot of time on various government websites. NASA, USGS and NOAA, for example, have provided me with hours of opportunity to learn the esoteric and fascinating things we've paid for with our tax dollars. Nothing prepared me, though, for something what I ran across today.



This site could easily absorb every hour in the day for an indefinite period of time. It has tools and datasets from the DoD to the CDC to the USGS all in one place! Hundreds of thousands of images, web widgets, charts, graphs... It's exhausting in extent. If you like data, lots and lots of data, take a look.

On Being Human

It is the duty of every person to use their particular confluence of nature and nurture, for the benefit of themselves and of those around them, and to bring mercy and justice into the world, which only human beings can do.

Periodic Table of Videos

Just a pointer to a really great website with a really great concept: the Periodic Table of the Elements with a video for each one. The videos range from narratives to demonstrations, and are all interesting and a lot of fun.


Warning! Dangerous(ly fun) Chemicals!

The site is great for kids or adults. Just be sure you set aside some time before visiting because you won't want to stop watching.

Tools for the Road

This blog's tagline is "tools, things and ideas". When I started writing it, as an exercise in putting my thoughts into essay form, I reached into my pocket and pulled out what I carry around. I wrote about those things as a start. Since then, I have written much more about ideas than tools and so I am trying to make up for that a bit.


Years in the making, the "kit".

My on-the-go tool kit is designed for general adjustment and repair of whatever I might encounter while out and about, as well as working on small things on the bench. It includes drivers, pliers, tweezers, probes, saws and visual aids and chemicals (such as adhesives and thread locker) all in a compact form.

If you click on the link under the picture, you can expand each of the four images into a larger and more satisfying size. You can probably identify quite a few of the items, but not all of them. The screwdriver set is a trusty Wiha roll kit, no longer made so far as I can tell. It is about 20 years old now, and is still my favorite. Wiha tools are very high quality and I have several of their screwdriver sets. I highly recommend them. In the roll are also a pair of excellent Swiss Erem tweezers*, and a "probe" I fabricated from a dental pick which serves many purposes included lock-pick and CD drawer ejector.

I am going to leave the other tools for later posts as I could write a few thousand words on what is in that kit and that's not a task for now. If you have any questions about the items in the photos, please use the address at the top of the blog sidebar and email me about it.

—
* If you need some tweezers like them, check DealExtreme, but give yourself plenty of time because you won't be able to stop clicking.

A Real Multitool for the Pocket

This Father's Day my family gave me a great gift, a Skeletool. The Skeletool is the visually confusing next-generation multitool from Leatherman.


"Ooo... what is it? I mean, how do you open it?"

I already owned a Leatherman Wave and like it as much as I can like any multitool (which is limited, since they are never quite right). But the Wave is big and heavy and is definitely not comfortable in the pocket. The sheath has a nice horizontal carry option but it is still a burden and frankly rather geeky for EDC (Every Day Carry).

Enter Skeletool. Here's a minimalist multitool: knife, screwdriver(s), pliers, cutters (hard and soft wire), and the very important bottle opener which doubles as a 'biner to clip the tool to a convenient loop. (Or maybe the carabiner is the doubling as a bottle opener, this may remain an eternal debate...) In any case, here's a tool with the essentials that weighs in about about five ounces, is geek-sexy as all get out, and made very nicely. It's belt clip holds it nicely in the pocket, and while it is decidedly thicker and heavier than my 3" single-bladed folder, it is also has decidedly more utility.

The blade is beefy, and has a nice profile that provides a working point and a tip that works very well for things like package opening, and a broad body that does well on cutting line and straps. The screwdriver uses Leatherman's machined down 1/4 hex bits and offers two choices (two phillips and two straight edge) with spare bit storage in the handle that works well. The pliers/cutters benefit from the lessons Leatherman has learned from previous versions and feature a strong box joint and excellent fit and finish. The bottle opener works reasonably well, and the carabiner clip retains the cap, whether by serendipity or design I don't know.

So, bottom line, if you want a pocket-sized multitool that is eminently carry-able while providing genuine utility, take a look at a Skeletool. The price is reasonable for the quality, or, you can have six kids and wait a few years until they buy you one.

On the Universal Rôle of Mythology

When we read Plato's stories of the life of Socrates, it is very easy for us to spot the mythology involved. Plato's Socrates is a pious devotee of Athena, the goddess of war and of wisdom. It is central to his understanding of what is ethical, and ultimately he chooses death as more acceptable than leaving Athens, Athena's city.



Greek Athena, a Copy Signed by ANTIOCHOS as she Appeared on the Acropolis

For us, it is self-evident that Socrates is being superstitious, that Athena is purely mythological—that is to say not real. We are inclined to say, "Why should Socrates die for such nonsense?" Yet, I can't help but wonder that if the tables were turned and Socrates were reading an account of one of our lives what he would spot, without hesitation, as mythological, and wonder at.

Look in a dictionary for a definition of mythology, and you will find something like:

mythology |məˈθäləjē|
noun ( pl. -gies)

1. a collection of myths, esp. one belonging to a particular religious or cultural tradition.
• a set of stories or beliefs about a particular person, institution, or situation, esp. when exaggerated or fictitious.

2. the study of myths.

I want to extend this definition to uncover the essential and universal rôle of mythology in every person's world view. I assert that each and every one of us has a mythology which is the very foundation of our understanding. It serves the purpose of allowing us to sift the infinite number of facts that bombard us each day. Without a mythology, ordinary thinking would be an infinite regress of questioning, practical decision-making would be impossible.

My definition of mythology is "a set of unquestioned and even unquestionable beliefs which form the foundation of practical reasoning about the world and are both influenced by and give rise to a set of stories which both evolve and bolster those self-evident truths."

That is, my mythology, and yours, and every single persons consists of those things which we do not question, and even things which we cannot question as they lie outside of our awareness while still influencing us. When someone says, "the facts speak for themselves", they are relying on a mythology to provide the framework. The facts never speak for themselves, they can't. Facts are not arguments, they must have a logical framework to provide the meaning that is so self-evident to the speaker.

People almost never realize that self-evident things are not proven. In their minds, self-evident things are given the same weight as the proofs which arise from the assumptions they make. That is to say, a valid logical inference is not necessarily "true". The logical inference: "all men have two brains, Plato was a man, therefore Plato had two brains" is valid but false. If we agreed that all men have two brains, and that Plato was a man, it would not only be valid but true. Logical inferences inherit they truthfulness from the assertions of fact of which they are composed.

In the case of "the facts speak for themselves", the person asserting this invites us to plug a fact into a preëxisting framework that provide the "all men have two brains" part. "Plato was a man, the fact speaks for itself, he had two brains." In this case, the speaker may or may not be aware that there is a question of the two-brainedness of men. She may well have no idea why the "facts speak for themselves". This is the nature of mythology. The other guy has the mythology, we have the Truth.

Mythologies, though, are not necessarily falsehoods. Their merit does not lie in the strict factuality of their construction but in the unspeakable (that is, beyond simple words) foundation which they provide for moral, ethical and epistemic reasoning. Mythologies offer a way to weave essential messages about the world into all of our thinking. They are complex and very large in extent. They are evolving (in most cases, or they die). They do not inherently suggest a particular ideological result, nor are differing mythologies necessarily mutually exclusive. However, when two people have different mythologies, communication is very difficult.

Mythology, being pervasive and essentially foundational, creates a vocabulary for its adherents. Words like: "ethical", "moral", "right", "freedom", "oppression" and countless others are tied intimately to the mythologies that give rise to them. The dictionary is no help in this case, since there is no authority except the mythology for the "meaning" of these words.

Mythology, then, is not a bad or false thing. The stories that make up a mythology are generally exempla, fables, allegories. They are intended to instruct and bolster a complex interleaving of ideas. They needn't be factual to be useful.

When people mistake exempla for factual reporting, and mistake mythologies for proven 'truths" we get various types of orthodoxies, and we get wars and prejudice and pointless hatred. I am willing to let my friend have a mythology that varies from my own. I want to learn from him about the hidden assumptions of my own mythology. He has an ability to see what I take as self-evident as possibly wrong and that is a precious thing.

Why bother?

My friend Robert asked me "What is the value of pursuing philosophy?" I answered him:

The value of the pursuit of answers to epistemic questions lies in the space beyond the limits of speech and before the limits of thought.

I couldn't really say more without lying.

I am a Key Signing Iconoclast*

PGP keys are a way to digitally sign and/or encrypt data such as email, source code, documents and the like. They use a public key system whereby I provide you with a key that you can use to verify a "signature", or in combination with another to decrypt the encrypted data.



Here's a key, it doesn't really have anything to do with this essay.



The signature works because you get my key from a trusted source (me) or because other trusted people have used their own key to sign mine. This is called a web of trust. To make a key "trustable" it has to be signed by a person that is trusted. This can be you, if you've received my key in a way that leads you to believe it is really my key, or someone that you explicitly (or implicitly) trust to verify the veracity of the source.

To this end people are very careful about signing keys. They, in general, will only do it in person, with supporting documentation such as a passport or a driver's license, or both! They take it all very seriously to ensure that the web of trust has value. I agree with this motivation whole-heartedly.

On the other hand, I have decided that in spite of the excellent motivation this key signing orthodoxy has damaged the value of the keys, and because it is, at this point, just an orthodoxy (and not a rational process), has excluded an entirely legitimate domain for PGP keys (quite possibility the most legitimate one).

Keys have a name and one or more uid entries. The uids are email addresses. So the identity to which this key refers is the combination of a moniker and an address. The name, according to the orthodoxy, must appear on some sort of identification document with a photograph, preferably more than one of these. Such documents cannot verify the address, though, and may not even be the name used by the key holder in correspondence. So what is going on here?

The pious signer is using a method which has a very stark appearance of rigor in righteous defense of the web of trust. Here the motivation is excellent but the practice is outright silly. In most if not virtually all cases does not verify the address included in the key with any special rigor. It is, after all the pair that matters and the extra emphasis on the legal name of the person serves no good purpose. If, as is the case with most folks, your concern is that signed email, documents, and the like come from the person you expect is the key owner, why be concerned with the legal name at all?

My own key, the one I most care about asserts only "Yaakov". This is my identity. It is much more real than anything the government would have to say about me. Combined with my email address, it is uniquely me. I am consistently "Yaakov". You, reader, know me as Yaakov. My key is saying "I am Yaakov who corresponds from a certain email address". A signer is saying "I affirm that this key is telling the truth." My key claims nothing about any passports or licenses I might hold. It says, "I am the person you know." So, if I sign my email to you, you will know that it is, in fact, from me. What does this have to do with government paperwork? Why nothing of course.

So if you know me, and you would like to sign my key, or if you agree with me, and you would be willing to use an email exchange and/or other peer-to-peer confirmation of my Yaakov identity, email me at the address at the top of the sidebar and we can convince each other that we are each other in some way that has to do with how we actually use these keys. I am happy to be an iconoclast and remind people what signing should mean. There is no singular method for saying "I am convinced that the holder of this key is, in fact, the person I know it to represent." And so far as I am concerned, the current method, in the face of actual use of the keys, is just not very useful.

—
*iconoclast |īˈkänəˌklast| noun 1. a person who attacks cherished beliefs or institutions. It comes from the Byzantine Empire where some folks (including the odd empreror) felt that "icons", fancy painted panels which figured in the Eastern Orthodox Church's ritual were right out, being biblically prohibited as "graven images". They broke (-clast from the Greek "klan", "to break") the panels to show their disapproval.

Why StumbleUpon Visitors are Not Welcome

Recently I began to notice StumbleUpon as a referrer in the logs for this blog. I had seen it before, but that was to a specific post, and I had no problem tracking down the recommendation someone had made on the site. This time, though, the link was to the front page, and try as I might I could not find such recommendation on the StumbleUpon pages. The referrer link itself was no help since it is just a pointer to a marketing page trying to get me to advertise with them.

A friend mentioned that he recalled a button in the StumbleUpon "toolbar" (really an outer frame) to randomly choose a site. This idea also seemed to explain why many times only some of the images are downloaded (the visitor simply clicked on "stumble" again when the first impression wasn't appealing). So it seems, that this it the source of my StumbleUpon visitors. They are people randomly hopping around the web hoping to find something "interesting".

At first I was basically neutral about this but as I saw more and more such visitors I found I was beginning to feel irked. I write this blog for myself and for people who share an interest in the type of things I think and write about. I don't do anything to "drive traffic" here. I have no interest in increasing the readership. I certainly find satisfaction that my 300 or so subscribers enjoy my writing enough to be subscribers. I am very happy when a post here is publicized on some other site and people visit to read it. Some folks stay around and read more, some even subscribe so they can keep up to date. This is all very nice.

But, I perceive an essential difference between people choosing to read something that looks interesting to them and people randomly "stumbling" in here hoping that I will entertain them. The aren't friends, they aren't like-minded, they are just people filling my logs and using my bandwidth. Even when someone happens upon this blog because of a search engine result that is tangentially related to the content, they at least have a semantic connection to my writing. The aren't just seeking random entertainment. They are pursuing some vector of ideas on which my writing lies.

I didn't ask StumbleUpon to send you here, nor did you. I don't write this blog for you. I am not selling anything, and your stumbling isn't any value to me. You are not welcome here because you didn't intend to come here.