I’m reading “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!” which is, by the way, fantastic. He is instantly likable, and his stories are incredible in many ways. I was reading last night when I came across a passage about him watching a paramecium under a microscope:

I watched these paramecia hit something, recoil, turn through an angle, and go again. The idea that it’s mechanical, like a computer program - it doesn’t look that way. They go different distances, they recoil different distances, they turn through angles that are different in various cases; they don’t always turn to the right; they’re very irregular. It looks random, because you don’t know what they’re hitting; you don’t know all the chemicals they’re smelling, or what.

In light of this, I suggest a new metric for judging artificial intelligence - the Paramecium Turing Test. The paramecium chats with two agents for five minutes, and tries to decide which one’s a computer.

A little game I play with myself sometimes that’s somewhat along the lines of Desert Island is this (I don’t have a name for it): If you suddenly found yourself way back in time, what would you bring (intellectually, academically) back from modern times?

Try it for different time periods. For example, if it were 5000 B.C., would you, say, know how to smelt? I guess I try to put things in the context of the big ideas / advances of the time.

If it were the 1400’s, could you demonstrate that the earth was round? If it were the 1700’s or so, could you explain Maxwell’s equations? Late 1800’s - relativity? Quantum mechanics? Wave-particle duality?

This sometimes makes me wish I knew how to smelt.

One of those relatively common “getting to know you” games is “Desert Island.” You’re given a class of objects (like, CDs), and a number indicating how many you can bring. In short, if you had to listen to 5 albums for the rest of your life, or read five books, or play the same five board games, which would you choose?

Today’s xkcd was on the subject of being stranded, isolated, with essentially large amounts of time on your hands. I was so happy reading it, because in one panel he describes that during the character’s infinite solitude, he “rederived modern math in the sand… and then some.” This is what I had always imagined when I’ve played Desert Island. No distractions - no women, enough food to support me, no video games, no internet. Just a (let’s say noble) quest to further my own knowledge. Discover. Explore. I think of it like being in an enormous library of blank books except for a few basic texts, which you know by heart. Eternity to fill them. [caption id=”” align=”aligncenter” width=”400” caption=”Courtesy of xkcd.com”][/caption]

It took me about three hours, but I got my fourth graphics project pretty much done. A little polish in terms of user interface, and one little feature, but that’s it.

The project is dealing with Voronoi diagrams, and so the first part was to generate a random set of points, and then the associated Voronoi diagram:

[caption id=”attachment_148” align=”aligncenter” width=”300” caption=”A Voronoi diagram”][/caption]

The next step was to actually create a mosaic. The idea is that the whole Voronoi region should be the color of the point on the picture that corresponds to the associated Voronoi point. At any rate, what it comes down to is pretty pictures. I’ve included the original and mosaic version for some of the pictures we were provided. [caption id=”attachment149” align=”aligncenter” width=”300” caption=”Some Columbines”][/caption] [caption id=”attachment150” align=”aligncenter” width=”300” caption=”A mosaic version of the same columbines”][/caption] [caption id=”attachment151” align=”aligncenter” width=”300” caption=”Guggenheim Hall”][/caption] [caption id=”attachment152” align=”aligncenter” width=”300” caption=”A mosaic of Guggenheim Hall”][/caption] [caption id=”attachment153” align=”aligncenter” width=”300” caption=”A picture of a couple of squirrels”][/caption] [caption id=”attachment154” align=”aligncenter” width=”300” caption=”A mosaic of two squirrels”][/caption]

I’ve got others, but they are less than impressive. If you’ve got a square picture that you’d like to see made into a mosaic in this way, and I like you, send it along. Or, use any number of image editors.

My friends are not computer science, but I’ve talked about NP-Completeness enough for them to know to zone out when the phrase comes up. I find the topic extremely fascinating, as at some level I feel like Algorithms courses are where math best meets computer science. Well, outside of scientific computing. Or graphics. Regardless, the two disciplines meet here.

Reading Coding Horror, I found this gem:

NP-complete problems are like hardcore pornography. Nobody can define what makes a problem NP-complete, exactly, but you’ll know it when you see it. Just this once, I’ll refrain from my usual practice of inserting images to illustrate my point.

Hilarious. The rest of the article is good, too.

Recently, my friends and I were at my school’s Divali festival. It was very crowded, and it was tough to find a set of three consecutive chairs at any table for us to all sit at. I recognized this immediately as bin-packing, an NP-hard problem. Basically, the tables are bins, and you have groups of various sizes (some people came alone, some in pairs, etc.) that you want to fit into these bins wasting as little space as possible / using as few tables as possible. Another example of this problem might be going to the movie theatre with your friends / family. My friends got bored pretty quickly when I brought this up.

I just submitted my application for a the Critical Language Scholarship, which would put me in an Arab country (Tangiers, Morocco; Cairo, Egypt; Amman, Jordan; or Beirut, Lebanon) for 7 - 10 weeks for an intensive program in Arabic. I hope to travel around the Middle East for a couple weeks before that (we’ll see how the visa situation turns out), but I thought I’d share the essays I wrote for my application now that the process is essentially over.

(In addition to this program, I will be applying to two other similar programs, although one of those would take place in California, and not a foreign country.)

1) Please explain how you become interested in studying Arabic and what preparation you have done to date to learn about the region.

Suffice it to say, Arabic is a language not traditionally studied in the West. Given its relative rarity, it has always held a very intense exotic appeal to me. It has the most gorgeous script of any language I’ve encountered, and I find spoken Arabic striking. The Middle East is thus a land of mystery intrigue, and Arabic provides a gateway. I have a habit of asking every person with an accent that I meet where he comes from. In this way, I’ve met many interesting people here in the States: Persians, Israelis, South Koreans, Saudis, Moroccans, Jordanians, and many others. Granted, these people are all of a certain type—the kind of person willing to pack up and move to another country. With each person, especially those from the Middle East, I ask as many questions as possible about relations between their country and others, cultural perspectives, lifestyle and so on. While in Washington D.C, I made friends with some Moroccan men, and we talked at length in French about life in the United States compared to in Morocco. On the same trip, I spoke to a Saudi man named Jafer about the culture, and especially the lessening of Sunni-Shia tensions. My friend, Shireen, is half Iranian and I’ve spoken to her and her father at great length about Iran’s history and the relationship of the citizens with the government before and after the revolution and war. I devour any article I can find about the Middle East, from the leaders of countries to the wars and international relations. From al-Dahabi to Ahmadinejad’s personal web log. When I can, I like to watch Al-Jazeera English, and on my nightstand sits a copy of Edward Said’s “The Politics of Dispossession.”

2) Please explain what you hope to obtain from participation in this intensive language program and how it will contribute to your immediate and long-range goals. Within your response, please include answers to the following questions:

a. How does the program fit into your academic career? b. What are your career goals and how does study and mastery of this language contribute toward meeting those goals?

When learning a language in the classroom, despite earnest attempts by teachers to incorporate the associated culture, I find that one gets a more or less sterile lesson of the language. In high school, I took four years of French, but it wasn’t until I spent a good deal of time there that I felt like I knew the language. I didn’t form sentences in English and translate them anymore , but learned to think, dream, and speak directly in French. It’s the difference between knowledge by description and knowledge by acquaintance. What I hope to gain from participating in this program is to not just read and write better Arabic, but also to live it. In terms of my academic career, I will be matriculating to the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Thuwal, Saudi Arabia, a mere 80 kilometers from the cultural hub that is Jeddah. I think part of the academic lifestyle is living the collegiate culture in the surrounding areas. And of course this means diving into Arabic. With respect to career/personal goals, I think it’s very important to be a world citizen—acquainted with many languages, cultures and traditions. I think it’s virtuous in its own right, but also it promotes international understanding. As a career, I’d like to find work in diplomacy or intelligence—anything to help keep the peace and advance world relations. I see spending time overseas as a tremendous boon to this career decision.

3) Please explain how you expect to build upon the experience of participating in this intensive language program. Within your response, please include answers to the following questions:

a. What language courses do you plan to take in the future? b. What resources are available to you to further your study of the language? This may include resources through your college or university, community organizations, personal or professional contacts, or other institutions. c. If language courses are not offered at your institution, what specific steps will you take to continue your language study?

I don’t think of the Arab world as just a place to do my graduate studies, but rather a place I’d like to frequent during my lifetime. In that sense, I don’t want to participate in this program as an isolated event. KAUST (the graduate school I’m attending in Thuwal, KSA) will be offering a certain number of intensive short-form classes in Arabic of which I plan to take full advantage. Beyond the traditional classroom approach, I’d certainly be interested in pursuing subsequent CLS programs in future summers. In addition to organized Arabic education, there will be a significant Arabic-speaking community at KAUST. Within this community I hope to make many friends and to practice Arabic with them while participating in their culture and traditions. Beyond even this student body, there are 27 million Arabic-speakers in the country to speak with. And, being in such proximity to Jeddah means a chance to walk the streets and experience the home life of Arab culture. Jeddah is merely the beginning. With so many interesting countries nearby—Jordan, Egypt, Qatar, Bahrain, Yemen, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates to name a few—I expect to feel a very powerful wanderlust during my time there. I am a strong believer that a large part of really knowing a language is getting into the thick of it. Initiating conversations, getting in just a little over your head in terms of linguistic ability, using the wrong verbs, and discovering beyond the denotation of words to their cultural connotations. My time at KAUST (which may last up to five years) will be filled with such opportunity.

4) The intensive language program will offer an exciting opportunity for students to be immersed in a foreign culture. The program will also offer many challenges. Please explain what experiences and unique personal qualities you would bring to program. Within your response, please include the following information:

a. Please describe any living/working experiences you have had, either overseas or in the US (such as in the classroom, in dormitories or residences, work or volunteer activities, etc.) where you have been required to interact with people from backgrounds different than your own. b. Please describe how you have dealt with challenging living situations or different cultural situations, and how you plan to deal with experiences that may be quite different from those you may have encountered previously in the US. c. Please describe the unique personal qualities you would bring to the group.

I have a fair amount of international experience - my father is French and the majority of my extended family lives overseas. Cumulatively, I have probably spent 4-6 months living there amidst French culture—the museums, the cheese, and the late nights arguing about politics. Many of my close friends are also first generation Americans with parents coming from Mexico, Vietnam, South Africa, Iran, and Jordan. Stepping into their households is like getting a glimpse of their home country. I spent a year in Japan studying abroad, during which I travelled and talked with many Japanese people. From gathering with my research lab for dinner to going to Sapporo’s international snow festival. Beyond the Japanese experience, only a small minority of the students studying abroad there were American. Indonesian to Kazakhstani, we all got along and learned each other’s ways. As Americans we hosted a Thanksgiving dinner. Some Indian students invited us to celebrate Diwali, and Muslim students, Eid ul-Fitr. Challenges do arise, but I believe that compromise is the essence of diplomacy. For example, while Tisha B’Av, one refrains from going to parties. This coincided with a close friend’s birthday party, and so in order to remain friendly, I made a brief appearance. Other times it’s just a matter of learning new norms. Like properly setting down chopsticks in Japan, or entering a room with your right foot in Muslim communities. I do my best when I encounter these differences to incorporate them as a show of respect, no matter how odd or challenging I might find them. In terms of unique characteristics I bring, I have already a colorful cultural background, and I only want to expand upon it. I deeply desire to understand foreign traditions, and participate actively in other cultures.

One summer I was taking summer classes at Mines and I rode the bus to school four days a week. Strange people congregate on the bus sometimes, but mostly it’s just groggy people trying to pass the time on the way to work / school. I was one such person.

I woke up one morning as we reached one of the bus stops. A tall, scraggly man got on the bus, smelling rather strongly. Backpack in tow and wearing a coat despite the weather combined with his demeanor and the metal cup he was holding out in front of him, I gathered that he was panhandling. I reached into my pocket and found some change, and proceeded to drop it into his cup, only to find that he was not, in fact, asking for change, but rather just trying to drink his coffee. Plop plop.

Not long ago we got our third graphics project assigned. In the first we wrote our own raytracer, and in the second we got familiar with OpenGL and implemented a trackball interface that would load a model and allow the user to rotate it around to see it from different angles. This third project deals with texturing, however.

The first part was to generate a torus and texture it with a tile-able pattern (we were given a few wood textures and one brick). Same trackball interface applies.

[caption id=”attachment_130” align=”alignnone” width=”300” caption=”A torus made of bricks”][/caption]

Next up was to add a way to render a model that’s seemingly made out of mirror, reflecting a virtual environment, provided to us by a teacher. This one seems to be the inside of a building near a window.

[caption id=”attachment_131” align=”alignnone” width=”300” caption=”Bunny of mirrors”][/caption]

Lastly, given a 3D texture (marble), we were to “carve” a model out of that material. See Isis and the shark made of marble.

KAUST’s Provost, Fawwaz Ulaby, started things off with a presentation about KAUST and its facilities, and then there was some time for a Q & A. Highlights follow.

In Michigan, where Prof. Ulaby currently works, there are three universities that share a NMR machine purchased for them by the state. Demands for time on this machine are relatively high, and so professors from these schools only get about 30 - 60 minutes on it per month. KAUST will have 6 such machines.

KAUST’s per-student investment is US$3 million.

KAUST hired a professor from Imperial College to oversee the construction of an electron microscope of the highest caliber. Apparently, though, as the project is wrapping up, this particular professor was so excited about this machine that he has requested a position at KAUST that he might be able to make use of it.

In January, we will be taken to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia to go to a research symposium and check out the campus, etc. They’ve apparently reserved something like 80% of the Jeddah Hilton for their students during this week-long event. We’ll get a chance to see the campus under construction - that is, to see the more than 30,000 laborers building the 14-square-mile community. We’ll also be going camping in the desert - camels and all!

The director of the NIH (an organization that reportedly distributes about US$30 billion per year in grants for medical research), Elias Zerhouni has announced that he’ll be stepping down as director, and joining KAUST’s board of directors. He gave a speech at the event, and is clearly very well-educated and articulate, and I think he will be able to bring a lot to KAUST.

In addition to giving us generous stipends for everything we could need from travel to books to cost of living to new computers, each of us is assigned to an advisor who will reportedly be guiding through the next ~10 months. This includes advice about which courses to take, but we’ll also be participating in several developmental exercises aimed at developing the students a little more holistically. It will focus on things like cultural awareness, time management, etc. Potentially interesting.

The program looks really fantastic, and the classes so far look pretty interesting. They said they expect about 60% of their Masters students to continue on to their doctoral program, and this is something in which I’d be very interested.

I’d like to say a few things that KAUST brought up at the Recognition Event this weekend in Washington, D.C., but KAUST seems to like to be tight-lipped about certain details, and so I will be putting a password on the following entry. If you’re friend / family and would like to read about it, please email me requesting the password.