Kendall Giles

A colleague just gifted me with the book Smart and Simple Financial Strategies for Busy People, by Jane Bryant Quinn.

Unlike complex financial strategies based on timing the market or spending inordinate amounts of time and energy tracking various stocks and funds, Quinn's advice is motivated by the desire for simple strategies that anyone, with any schedule, can implement. Anyone has time to follow her advice and reap the rewards. Topics include buying insurance, buying a house, getting rid of debt, and how to invest money.

Technorati Tags: academia, income, living, review

The full report of the Virginia Tech Review Panel regarding the massacre of students and faculty members by Seung Hui Cho has been released.

On April 16, 2007, Seung Hui Cho killed 32 students and faculty, wounded 17, and shot himself. While clearly the fault lies with Cho, an independent investigation was conducted to see if there were any lessons that we could learn so that these tragedies might be prevented in the future.

This BBC article gives a good summary of the results of the report, but some findings seem to be that:

• Cho's parents did not make clear to the university his mental health problems
• Virginia Tech and state health workers did not intervene effectively to take corrective action when repeated evidence of Cho's problems were exhibited
• There was a critical failure of the emergency communication process by the university and campus police
• Virginia's mental health laws are flawed and mental health services are inadequate
• emergency medical care was very effective

Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher asked a very reasonable and pointed question regarding privacy laws that do more harm than good:

Here's what I don't get. In the hundreds of interviews the panel conducted, why didn't they ask all those people whose job it is to care for students one question: How would you have handled Cho if you had let your conscience, not privacy laws, guide you?

It also seems unfortunate that Cho's high school, which recognized his mental health problems and intervened to give him special assistance, tutoring, and programs so that he could graduate high school, did not tell Virginia Tech about Cho's situation. As quoted in this article about Cho's early childhood:

"What the admissions staff at Virginia Tech did not see were the special accommodations that propped up Cho and his grades," including private sessions with teachers that spared him public speaking...

Strangely, the report did not talk about religion.

Hopefully the report's findings will be heeded by universities, governments, and mental health workers, to help prevent something like that from happening again. But we all should not forget what happened on that tragic day.

Technorati Tags: academia, culture, virginia

Curled up behind the bookcase, it looked like one of our kittens. But the snout and tail gave it away!

Technorati Tags: living, virginia

I am attending a research workshop on knowledge and search engines at UCLA's IPAM this week (and the next several). The image below is a panoramic shot of the UCLA property (May's Landing in Malibu) where we had the kickoff retreat.

Yesterday I gave two tutorial talks. The first was on the basics of Google's PageRank algorithm, and the second was on the basics of knowledge discovery systems. Yesterday Petros Drineas from RPI also gave a talk, on a linear algebra perspective on information retrieval and data mining.

Today Yuval Rabani from the Israel Institute of Technology gave a talk on Metric Geometry. Other speakers today include Rafail Ostrovsky from UCLA (talking about nearest neighbor search and clustering methods) and Peter Jones from Yale University (talking about hierarchical structures in datasets and eigenfunctions).

Rafail is about to begin his talk, as I type.

Technorati Tags: academia

I have posted my PageRank and Knowledge Discovery talks I gave at IPAM for the Knowledge and Search Engines workshop online on my presentations page if you would like to have a look.

Technorati Tags: academia, technology

There is a new graphic novel out now called Gods of Asgard, by Eric Evensen. It looks to be an interpretation of the Norse mythology - you know, Odin, Thor, Tyr, Frigga, the Valkyries, ... from the author's website:

The Norse gods are the pagan deities worshipped in pre-Christian Scandinavia. Although not as well-known as the gods from Greek and Roman mythology, they were no less unique. The Norse gods were powerful, revered and respected, sometimes feared. They were mortal, and they knew through prophecy of the end of their reign. And their fame lives on today, in literature, movies, comics, opera, and the days of the week.

This looks to be a very interesting and entertaining new book, though the author is only partially correct in stating that the Norse Gods were worshipped in pre-Christian Scandinavia. The Gods were also worshipped by the Germanic peoples all across Europe - even North America, and continue to be so today - from an article in the University of South Alabama's paper The Vanguard:

Within the last 30 years, a lot of people have been trying to get back to their roots, to reconnect with what their ancestors believed and how they lived. One of the faiths that has sought to re-establish itself is Asatru.

Asatru can best be defined as the revival of the ways, beliefs and customs of the ancient Germanic tribes of northern Europe which inhabited, at differing times in history, the modern nations of England, Germany, Ireland, Iceland, Scotland, Wales, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, West Poland, Northern Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, and Finland. These countries are currently seeing a revival of this very ancient pre-Christian faith.

Technorati Tags: book, culture, religion, spirit

A recent article by Neal Koblitz in the Notices of the AMS, titled "The Uneasy Relationship Between Mathematics and Cryptography," reminds me of the Leo Breiman paper "Statistical Modeling: The Two Cultures."

Both papers talk about the cultural and practical differences between various academic departments and how they do research. In the Breiman paper, he noted how progress was a bit limited in the field of statistical modeling by "classical" statisticians until computer scientists came along and opened up the field with new approaches, and corresponding new results.

The Koblitz paper discusses the field of cryptography, and describes how mathematicians and computer scientist cryptographers at first worked well together in coming up with various crypto-systems, but how now that relationship is no longer as solid. While the crypto-systems published by the computer scientist cryptographers are often more practical (usable), they also sometimes rush to publish papers with dramatic errors that might have been caught, say, by a more rigorous approach by a mathematician, such as Koblitz.

Technorati Tags: academia, security, technology

A Viking ship that was built in 1892 and sailed across the Atlantic, down the Erie Canal, through the Great Lakes and to Chicago for the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893, is currently in need of your help. The image above is of this ship moored in front of Manufactures, Chicago, in 1893.

This 76-foot ship, known as The Viking, is currently housed in Geneva at Good Templar Park (near Chicago). Left to neglect, this ship is doomed unless a restoration project receives funds.

From an article by the Norwegian National League:

The "Viking" was built at Framnes Shipyard in Sandefjord, Norway in 1892. It was copied after the ancient Viking ship "Gokstad". Excavated in 1880, the "Gokstad" had been called the most beautiful ship ever built. The "Viking" is approximately 76 feet long, 17 feet wide, and 7 feet high from the bottom of the keel to the gunwale. Clinker built with planking hand split from green logs, the "Viking" made 11 knots and the hull was observed to flex with the waves.

Most importantly, the Viking ship was declared one of ten most endangered historic sites in Illinois by a statewide historic preservation group.

American Express is running a competition for projects to receive funds, and the Viking ship is in the runoff. Some of the other projects and buildings in the competition might be nice things to do, but are not in as imminent danger of being destroyed --- the Viking ship will decay into the water unless we take action now to preserve this important cultural icon.

How can you help?

Go to: the partnership in preservation site, register, and VOTE FOR THE VIKING SHIP - you can vote ONCE A DAY, EVERY DAY, until voting ends on October 10, 2007.

Other links of interest on Vikings and Viking Ships:

• http://www.vikingship.us
• http://www.stigombord.dk/index_uk.html
• http://www.abc.se/~m10354/bld/viking.htm
• http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/vikings/ships.html
• http://sio.midco.net/danstopicalstamps/gokstad.htm
• http://www.cdli.ca/CITE/vikingteacher.htm
• http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/norse.html

Technorati Tags: academia, culture, living, technology