Author Archive: Paul Epps

Teaching Computer Science: Inequality = Bad?

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I’m volunteering a couple mornings a week in a high school computer science class . . . “Why don’t schools and classes have sponsors?” I ask one of the teachers. “When my kid was in school, they were always complaining about not having enough money. So why couldn’t you, for example, come in and say, ‘Hey kids, before you come to 1st period, make sure you have a good breakfast at McDonald’s. I’m lovin’ it!’? “And McDonald’s pays you 100 grand or whatever to say that.” “My concern,” he says, “is that would lead to more inequality in education.” I’m not sure he really thought that through. It seems more like a mechanical response to an abstract notion, i.e., “Inequality is bad.” As a parent, I always supported inequality in education. I wanted my kid to get the best possible education, better than most other kids. As a classroom volunteer,… Read more →

We Didn’t Even Have Indoor Plumbing

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In October 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a special report on “the impacts of global warming of 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels.” “Pre-industrial levels” is defined in the report as the the period from 1850 to 1900. Not explained in the report, unless I missed it, is why I should feel confident in the scientific precision of air and sea surface temperatures taken in the 19th century. Read more →

$15 Trillion for “Free” Healthcare

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$300K = free healthcare for 60 people?! $50K per person?! Multiply by 300 million Americans . . . check me on the math but isn’t that $15 trillion? For “free” healthcare?!?!?! Here’s what it looks like if you write it out: $15,000,000,000,000. Is this guy insane?!?!?! Read more →

Jesus Discovers America

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Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them. — Matthew 4:8 “Satan, what is that land mass way over there to the west?” “Oh that’s America. It hasn’t been discovered yet.” Read more →

Spot the Fake News: Students Call For USC Professor To Be Fired

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A professor at the University of Southern California has come under fire after sending a reply-all email last week to the student body stating “accusers sometimes lie.” “If the day comes you are accused of some crime or tort of which you are not guilty, and you find your peers automatically believing your accuser, I expect you find yourself a stronger proponent of due process than you are now,” Professor James Moore wrote in the email. “Accusers sometimes lie.” Nearly 100 students reportedly attended a rally called “Times Up for James Moore” on Monday in protest of Moore — who is tenured — demanding that he be fired. — Students Call For USC Professor To Be Fired For Saying ‘Accusers Sometimes Lie’ | Daily Wire Nearly 100 students! Not mentioned: USC has 44,000 students. A more accurate way to frame this would be “Out of 44,000 USC students, 43,900 understand… Read more →

EppsNet at the Movies: A Star is Born

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OK, actually I haven’t seen A Star is Born and here’s why: When I go to the movies, I like to see something I’ve never seen before. I don’t care for sequels, prequels, reboots, spinoffs, adaptations of TV shows, video games, comic books or other movies. I don’t like love stories. I find them unrealistic. I read a lot and the books and authors I like mostly exclude the possibility of true love. What is worse than when you want to see a movie and someone spoils it by telling you how it ends? If you’re remaking A Star is Born for the fifth time, everyone already knows how it ends. You’ve spoiled your own movie.   Director: Cast: IMDb rating: ( votes) Read more →

To Make the Accusation is to Prove It. To Hear the Allegation is to Believe It.

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Simply to make the accusation is to prove it. To hear the allegation is to believe it. No motive for the perpetrator is necessary, no logic or rationale is required. Only a label is required. The label is the motive. The label is the evidence. The label is the logic. Why did Coleman Silk do this? Because he is an x, because he is a y, because he is both. First a racist and now a misogynist. It is too late in the century to call him a Communist, though that is the way it used to be done. . . . That explains everything. — Philip Roth, The Human Stain Read more →

They Submitted Fake Papers to Peer-Reviewed Journals — Here’s What Happened Next

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Three writers produced 20 intentionally outlandish academic papers and submitted them to the best peer-reviewed journals associated with fields of scholarship loosely known as “cultural studies” or “identity studies” (for example, gender studies) or “critical theory.” Seven of the papers were accepted for publication and seven more were still under review when the authors elected to end the experiment. Their point would seem to be that scholarship in these fields is based less upon finding truth and more upon attending to social grievances. Just about anything can be published, so long as it falls within the moral orthodoxy and demonstrates an understanding of the existing literature. The authors summarize their methodology as follows. (I’ve inserted the material in brackets from elsewhere in the article, which you should look at in its entirety because there’s too much good stuff to summarize.) What if we write a paper saying we should train… Read more →

Competitive Programming: SPOJ – The Bulk!

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ACM uses a new special technology of building its transceiver stations. This technology is called Modular Cuboid Architecture (MCA) and is covered by a patent of Lego company. All parts of the transceiver are shipped in unit blocks that have the form of cubes of exactly the same size. The cubes can be then connected to each other. The MCA is modular architecture, that means we can select preferred transceiver configuration and buy only those components we need . The cubes must be always connected “face-to-face”, i.e. the whole side of one cube is connected to the whole side of another cube. One cube can be thus connected to at most six other units. The resulting equipment, consisting of unit cubes is called The Bulk in the communication technology slang. Sometimes, an old and unneeded bulk is condemned, put into a storage place, and replaced with a new one. It… Read more →

Sports Media Questions That Could be Retired

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“How important is it to get off to a good start today, Skipper?” “Do you know of any sports where participants try to get off to a bad start?” “Uh . . . no.” “Nor do I. That said, we always try to get off to a good start. And when we don’t, we try to come back and win anyway.” Read more →

More Words and Phrases I’m Sick Unto Death Of: Coming Forward

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You’re the accuser. You get on the witness stand. You testify. You make your accusation. You get cross-examined. THEN the accused responds. It turns the entire legal system on its head. It is INSANE to ask an accused person to deny the accusation before he has heard the accusation being made and cross-examined. — Alan Dershowitz I’m tired of the phrase “coming forward” being used to describe people making unsubstantiated allegations, because it presumes the truth of something that’s unknown and, in some cases, unknowable. The burden is still on the accuser, thank god for all of us. I “come forward” to accuse you — via the media, on Twitter, wherever — of having done a bad thing decades ago in high school. I don’t remember the details of when or where or who else was present, but now that you’ve been credibly accused, how do you respond to this… Read more →

Competitive Programming: SPOJ – Build the Fence

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At the beginning of spring all the sheep move to the higher pastures in the mountains. If there are thousands of them, it is well worthwhile gathering them together in one place. But sheep don’t like to leave their grass-lands. Help the shepherd and build him a fence which would surround all the sheep. The fence should have the smallest possible length! Assume that sheep are negligibly small and that they are not moving. Sometimes a few sheep are standing in the same place. If there is only one sheep, it is probably dying, so no fence is needed at all … Input t [the number of tests <= 100] [empty line] n [the number of sheep <= 100000] x1 y1 [coordinates of the first sheep] … xn yn [integer coordinates from -10000 to 10000] [empty line] [other lists of sheep] Text grouped in [ ] does not appear in the input file.… Read more →

Teaching Computer Science: You Just Got to Really Want To

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I’m volunteering a couple mornings a week in a high school computer science class . . . “Does anyone recognize this gentleman?” No one does. “Any pianists in the class?” About 5 kids raise their hands. “Do you ever go to YouTube and watch videos of pieces that you’re trying to learn?” Yes, they do. “Ok, this is Vladimir Horowitz.” Last time around, no one was able to identify Martha Graham. “I always know the name after you say it though,” one girl says. “Well, there’s more to life than technology, kids. There’s music, art, dance, literature . . . all these things help blow the dust off our ordinary existence. “I’ll get back to Horowitz in a minute. Last time I was here, I heard a conversation about how hard is it to go to college as a CS major. “I have some good news and bad news. I’ll… Read more →

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