i was intrigued by this report in the Australian of a mathematical genius who can find the 13th root of 100-digit number in seconds. I was even more intrigued to learn that the number was “selected at random”. The odds against a randomly selected 100-digit number having an integer 13-th root would be a nice problem for a math genius to solve in seconds[1] so I wonder what is meant by this.

Maybe you only have to derive the integer part, which, if my workings below are correct, is an eight-digit number lying in a fairly narrow range. Someone who knew the first three or four places of their log tables and was quick at interpolation could probably manage the feat in the time described.

Or maybe the number is selected from a list of 100-digit 13th powers. This would make life a little easier since you can get the last digit free or cheaply (with preparation, you could probably get a good handle on the last two digits).

I’m not planning on trying this at home, though.
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If I were called Tim Dick, I don’t think I’d write columns making fun of men called John.

Contact by Carl Sagan. It’s a novel (his only one?), now apparently out of print, about contact with extra-terrestrial intelligence. I’ve decided to start a process of discarding books I’m never going to read again, and I recall finding this one a bit disappointing the first time I read it, so it’s a candidate for the recycle bin. I’m only a couple of chapters in, and it starts off well enough, so maybe I’ll keep it.

This got me thinking about SETI in its various manifestations. It’s of interest as a distributed computing project, but I don’t know much about that side of things. More relevantly, I think the fact that nearly all the visible sky has been searched for radio signals, with no result, leads to some interesting and disturbing thoughts. A useful place to start is the (in)famous Drake Equation, which might be better referred to as the Drake Identity.

I won’t spell out the details, except to say that I think we can now assert, with high confidence that there are many planets (billions) and very few radio-using civilisations (probably none within thousands of light years of us[1]).

One implication that is fairly solid, I think, is that, either intelligent (radio-using) life arises extremely rarely (say once per galaxy) or interstellar travel is impossible. Otherwise some species would have colonised some planet in our neighbourhood. Either way, it seems certain that we will never have either physical contact or meaningful two-way communication with any other species.

The other implication is that radio-using civilisations either don’t arise often or don’t last long. I tend to favor the first implication. Even now, it would probably be possible for humans to set up a radio beacon in space that would last more or less indefinitely, and would serve as a permanent memorial if we managed to blow ourselves up (or back to the Stone Age). But even with civilisations lasting 100 000 years and arising on thousands of planets in our galaxy, the chances of actual contact (say, two civilisations existing simultaneously within 100 light years of other) would be minuscule.

fn1. In reference to planets a thousand light years away, it would be more precise to say that there were none a thousand years ago.

November 11 marks the armistice that was supposed to bring an end to the Great War in 1918. In fact, it was little more than a temporary and partial truce in a war that has continued, in one form or another, until the present. Hitler’s War and the various Cold War conflicts were direct continuations of the first Great War, and we are even now dealing with the consequences of the Balfour Declaration and the Sykes-Picot agreement.

The Great War was at the root of most of the catastrophes that befell the human race in the 20th century. Communism, Nazism and various forms of virulent nationalism all derived their justification from the ten million dead of 1914-18. Even the apparently hopeful projects that emerged from the war, from the League of Nations to the creation of new states like Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia ended in failure or worse. And along with war, conquest and famine came the pestilence of the Spanish Flu, which killed many more millions[1].

And yet this catastrophe was brought about under the leadership of politicians remarkable for their ordinariness. Nothing about Lloyd George, Clemenceau, Bethmann Holllweg or the other leaders on both sides marks them out for the company of Attila or Tamerlane or Stalin. How could men like these continue grinding their populations through years of pointless slaughter, and what led people to follow them? In retrospect, it is surely clear that both sides would have been better if peace had been made on the basis of any of the proposals put up in 1917 on the general basis of of “no annexations or indemnities”. The same was true, in reality, at any time from the outbreak of war in 1914 until the final collapse of the Central Powers, and even then the terms of 1917 would have been better for all than those of Versailles.We should think about this every time we are called to war with sweet-sounding slogans.

War is among the greatest of crimes. It may be the lesser evil on rare occasions, but it is always a crime. On Remembrance Day and always, this is what we should remember.

fn1. It’s not clear whether the War exacerbated the pandemic, for example through massive movements of people and widespread privation. But it seems right to consider them together when we remember the War.

For those with fond memory of the good old days of university student politics (and for that matter, for any younger readers who are still looking forward to these delights) the blogosphere brings you Pandagate, a ripping yarn which combines all the usual fun of the fair, including incomprehensible diatribes and juvenile electoral dirty tricks, with the Internet refinement of spurious identities. An added bonus is observing supposedly serious journalist, Andrew Bolt, join the fray, exchanging vitriolic emails with a spurious prankster. Robert Corr’s Kick & Scream is a good place to start.

I have no particular axe to grind in the war between advocates of whole language and phonics as methods of teaching reading. In the spirit of wishy-washy compromise, I suspect that both have their place.

But it strikes me as a rather odd feature of the debate that advocates of phonics should also be the ones most concerned about spelling. The vast majority of spelling errors arise from the use of the obvious phonetic spelling rather than the “correct” spelling that is part of the whole language. So one of the costs of the phonic approach is the need to learn, by rote, the vast number of exceptions and special cases that make spelling English such a miserable experience for the uninitiated.

Phonics phans never seem to recognise this.
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Having plunged a massive $25 in the office Calcutta[1] to buy Makybe Diva, I came out well ahead in the Emirates[2] Melbourne Cup this year. By my calculation, I’m now $20 ahead on a lifetime basis. A nice bottle of red should bring me back to par.

fn1. The pool was over $150, and the mare started about 5/1 so I could have made a neat $25 in arbitrage profits if I’d had time to run to the TAB. Since I didn’t, I stuck with my position and pocketed a neat $100.

fn2. I really can’t take this. The Fosters Melbourne Cup was a bit strange, but at least Fosters Lager is a quintessentially Melbourne product. What’s next? The McDonalds Anzac Day march?

Bob Carr has proposed

a new deal on federalism in the wake of the Howard Government’s big election win, offering to hand over responsibility for the health system to the Commonwealth.

In return, Bob Carr says, the Federal Government would give the states total control over schools and TAFE.

This is pretty close to what I’ve been arguing (along with Chris Sheil) for some time) though I tentatively suggested giving TAFE to the Feds.

I don’t suppose Carr gets his policy ideas from blogs, but perhaps there’s some indirect influence somewhere.

If you’re reading this, it’s a fairly safe bet that you’re in need of time-management tips[1]. On the other hand, the idea of a blogger giving time management tips is problematic, to say the least. Undaunted by this contradiction, I’m going to offer a few. The details reflect my main activity, which is academic research but may be more or less adaptable to other kinds of jobs.
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Following the model of my long-running GM foods thread, I’m putting up this post for anyone who wants to debate the issues regarding the Israel/Palestine dispute.

I request that debate in this thread be kept civilised with no coarse language or personal abuse – I will delete noncompliant comments and ban repeat offenders. I also request that commenters not raise general issues about the Israel/Palestine dispute when commenting on other posts. If there’s enough interest, and the general tone is constructive I’ll keep this post on the front page as long as discussion continues.

For what it’s worth, my view is that the Clinton/Barak plan was and is about right one and that both Arafat and Sharon are obstacles to peace.