This a traditional letter column.
You are encouraged to write a letter of comment on anything that you
find worthy of comment. It will (may) be published in this column along
with my reply. As editor I reserve the right to delete material;
however I will not alter the undeleted material. E-mail to me that solely
references the contents of this site will be assumed to be publishable
mail. All other e-mail is assumed to be private. And, of course, anything
marked not for publication is not for publication. Oh yes, letters of
appreciation for the scholarly resources provided by this site will be
handled very discreetly. This page contains the correspondence for
May 2005.
Some of it is a little ancient; I’m slowly catching up – very slowly.
From: Meredy Amyx
I came upon your site while looking for references to Densa. I know the
origin of Densa; I was there when it was born. Couldn’t quite figure out
what your site is, though, or how Densa came into it.
… continued on next rock …
Interesting concept for a website. I’ll have to go back and look more
closely. I definitely think that one of the rewards of intelligence is
the pleasure one can take in a certain kind of junk.
Densa made its debut in the August 1974 issue of BOMB (Boston & Outskirts
Mensa Bulletin), the newsletter of the Boston chapter of Mensa. I was the
editor at the time. John D. Coons was a regular contributor of puzzles,
and he liked to make up little storylines as his puzzle setups. By July
of that year he was running out of steam in contriving original setups
every month, and so he came up with a fictitious group that he didn’t have
to worry about offending. He called me up, excited over his solution to
the problem, and I gave him the green light to use it in his next
creation. Densa members and their doings became a running theme in his
puzzles, and particularly his matrix puzzles, which he called
A-Bomb-inable puzzles.
The Mensa newsletters, of which there were about 120 in the U.S. at the
time and a few dozen more abroad, all freely reprinted from one another,
and John’s puzzles were very popular. People all over Mensa became
familiar with them, and Densa jokes even began to pop up outside Mensa.
As is so often the case, folks quickly forgot the origins. Other claims
notwithstanding, John Coons was the author of Densa, the place was Boston,
and the date was 1974. I have all the issues of BOMB (later called
Beacon) for the three years in which I served as editor, and they include
many Densa puzzles after that original one.
From: Phil Mitchell
Howdy, what’s scissors stuck in the temple meant to mean?
From: dave ng
The beta for the next issue (http://bioteach.ubc.ca/quarterly/beta/)
minus pdf and one intro image is ready for view. It would be great
if in particular you can check out your own particular piece for
errors, broken links, etc. It will be launched on Monday afternoon.
Thanks again.
From: Peter Neilson
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//Netscape Corp.//DTD HTML plus Tables//EN"
"html-net.dtd">
<!–April seems to occur twice this year. –>
The reason has little to do with the charming and excessively
plausible explanations you propose. In truth it is more a matter
of sheer slop. I do all of my pages in raw HTML using a text editor.
Sometimes my poorfreading isn’t all it should be.
From: JoJo Zawawi
Very funny !!! I’ve only barely looked at it (a couple of recipes). Thanks
for the laugh !!!!!
From: Ariella Bernard
Ashley Bili
From: t daniels
enjoying your site very much.
i currently write a popular poker blog (type it into google – i come up #1)
called guinness and poker.
i was wondering if i could use your essay:
On Not Being A Professional Poker Player
with full credit and links (i send alot of traffic) on my blog.
if not, no biggie.
thanks for your time,
From: Lee Bowers
I’m a 52 yr old disabled USAF vet who’s a big fan of your show. I do know
in my prime I could’ve given many of your contestants a run for their
money, especially in Australia where I lived and worked four great years
in the outback. I also could’ve done well in Vanuatu since being a Black
American I have Melanesia backgrounds. I just want to suggest maybe a
couple more island sites since you focus on them. WHY NOT “PALMYRA”? I’d
love for the winner to maybe solve the “CURSE” of that island. OR MAYBE
CLIPPERTON? CLIPPERTON MAYBE HARD SINCE THERE’S NO AVAILABLE RESOURCES
THERE BUT I DO KNOW THAT YOUR STAFF COULD COME UP WITH SOMETHING AS YOU
USUALLY ARE GOOD AT WHAT YOU DO. What about the GALAPAGOS OR MAURITIUS?
I think they would be very challenging sites. I DO THNK PALMYRA WOULD BE
A PLACE WHERE THE WINNER “WOULD EARN HIS OR HER $1,000,000. Anyway, I
just wanted to broaden your horizons with my picks. Your cooperation is
greatly appreciated.
From: hostmaster
i need my money back!
From: bayoumy elgammal
want to know the fields of postmodenism so quickly please i need it badly
please recommend me the sites
From: Mr. Turan
We are looking for selfadhesive paper.
We look to forward to hearing your best quatition with related material soon.
From: Beverly
Let me know about you first. ….only if you are
70 to 80 and live in San Fernando Valley.
From: Clint Olsen
Sorry to bug you againt directly, but we had a discussion quite some time
ago about an interesting algorithm you mentioned regarding resizeable hash
tables. The technique you describe sounds very similar to ‘linear hashing’
proposed by Litwin in 1980, however your implementation of calculating the
bucket from the hash function is a bit more straightforward by stripping
off the leftmost bits until the result is less than the number of buckets
N.
I’m racking my brain about this topic since I’d like to come up with an
algorithm like yours but avoid chaining and use the ‘open addressing’
scheme where the bucket itself is the hash entry. My thought was to use
double hashing for collision resolution. The problem is that Knuth says
that if the table size is prime, the second hash function can be any value
from 1 -> N-1 but if you make the table size a power of two it only needs
to be odd. The goal of course is to produce two numbers that are
relatively prime so in the pathlogical case of a near table full condition
you will eventually hit every bucket at some point.
So, with your flexible algorithm, the problem is that N can be any value
and there’s not an easy way to ensure the secondary hash value is
relatively prime to the number of buckets.
I was wondering if you thought at all about this scheme and whether it has
merit? What’s nice about your scheme is that we can have more fine control
over the load factor of the hash table and avoid memory waste by plainly
‘doubling’ the table at discrete times as elements are added. We can still
choose discrete points at which to resize to avoid the penalty of rehashing
keys and reallocating buffers, but at least we can have arbitrary
watermarks for when to do so.
It is unlikely that one can avoid memory waste using this general scheme. The
catch is that we have to allocate space for the increasing table to grow into.
There are some cute things that one can do, e.g., fibonacci sized blocks, but I
opine that one has to accept some fixed percentage of wastage. This generally
isn’t important if the table holds links rather than raw data.
Let me think on this a bit next week; perhaps I shall have something more
useful to say.
From: Al Kossow
Hi, I ran across your page http://richardhartersworld.com/cri/2005/comphist.html
about your experiences with Whirlwind at Wolf Research, and wanted to
let you know that there are parts of the machine at the MIT museum and
at the Computer History Museum in Mtn View, CA. CHM has a collection of
magnetic tapes from the machine (some labeled as late as 1966) along with
some documentation and a very large collection of original paper tapes
but with no index of their contents.
There are some documents which I’ve scanned and put up on the bitsavers.org
archive http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/mit/whirlwind
Is there any chance you have any additional documentation on the machine
while it was at Wolf Research?
In any case, thanks for the link. I may amble through the pages and see
if they stir up any memories.
From: fhp
I NEED MY MONEY ASAP!!!
From: Mr. Ernest Ebi
Please we are sorry for the delay,but at the same time as the new
executive in this office we shortlisted your name out(in the Central Bank
of Nigeria’s payment file)among the list of individuals and companies that
the Central Bank of Nigeria had been owing for long.You were shortlisted
because some information are not complete and this was as a result of
mismanagement from our past executivesstaffs.According to the information
retrieved from the computer, you are owed the sum of nine million five
hundred thousand U.S Dollars.I am presently processing your payment and
would like you to furnish us with the following details:
(1) Your current physical address. This is to enable me to send your
cheque(Bank Draft) as soon as it is ready.
Once again ,i apologize to you on behalf of the Central Bank of Nigeria
for our failure to pay your funds, which according to records in the
system had been long overdue.Send the requested information by email to
this addresses [email protected] and [email protected]. You may call me on this direct phone
number 234-8030857196.
Yours faithfully,
From: janet
Products :Aqua shoes
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From: Clayton Truman
Hey there, Meant to come up a couple months ago to get the work done on
the machine. Have not been using it much, maybe 10 hours this year so far.
Just seem to not be able to get up there. Hope to come up early next week.
How is this for you?
From: Cynthia C Little
I just came across your website while doing some dissertation research–I
loved it! I especially liked your story,
Dinner at Andre’s.
I also found
it interesting that you have information about theory of mind on your
site. I am a PhD student in Educational Psychology who has an interest in
metacognition (the theory of mind you mentioned on your site is also a
component of Flavell, Miller & Miller’s 1993 theory on metacognition).
ANYWAY, I also have a Master’s degree in gifted education and an interest
in Sci-Fi. As a result, my dissertation is going to be on the development
of and manifestation of intense interest in science fiction among highly
intelligent young adults. What I’ve found over the years is that folks
who are avid sci-fi fans are usually very intelligent. No one seems to
have looked at this connection before. ANYWAY again, I really appreciate
your site because in essence you have “let me in” to the head of highly
intelligent sci-fi lover.
When I think about it, it seems to me very intelligent people can be roughly divided
into the obsessive and the non-obsessive, i.e., those who really get into something and
those who do not. The obsessive are prone to becoming entranced by the glittering toys
of the mind, e.g., games such as chess and bridge, science fiction, and computer
programming.
… continued on next rock …
Thanks for your comments–thus far in my studies of highly intelligent folks that love sci-fi (I married one for starters and also grew up with a brilliant father who loved Star Trek) I have to concur with your observations of “glittering toys of the mind” and the two camps (obsessive and nonobsessive). I’ve seen more obsession than nonobsession though. In fact, I don’t think I’ve come across a highly intelligent person who wasn’t at least bordering on obsession over something. As for metacognition and theory of mind, its interesting stuff. I encourage you to read Premack and Woodruff’s landmark 1978 study on whether or not chimpanzees have a theory of mind. The whole thing was a little “Planet of the Apes” to me though (I detest bananas:) )
Thanks again for all the wonderful musings on your site. I have it bookmarked.
I grant that the highly intelligent tend to obsess over something, though that may
just be a universal human characteristic. My model for this sort of thing is
the two world chess champions of the twenties and thirties, Capablanca and
Alekhine. Capablanca was a natural – he was enormously talented but he didn’t
take chess sseriously (or anything else, seemingly) to work hard at it. He can be taken
as the very model of the nonobsessive man. In the end he was defeated by Alekhine
who in turn was the very model of the obsessive man.
I do not know who was the happier, but it is true that Alekhine’s presence in the
chess world was greater – he was the creator of many standard openings and lines
of play.
The stereotype of the English gentleman can be taken as a model for the nonobsessive
man. He is educated but not “bricky”. He plays games but is not driven to distort
himself in pursuit of the prize. I don’t know if English gentlemen quite met the
ideal though. Rumor has it that the obsessive element retreated to the kinkier
areas of their private lives, but that, after all, is mere rumor.
From: dave ng
Hi Richard,
Just wanted to let you know that the humour site has closed its
doors, which is a shame because it’s been kind of fun to play around
with. Still, it never broke the 1500 visitors per month traffic
mark, despite being at that level for the several months. I took
this as a sign to give it a rest.
Thanks again, and please let me know if we can run your FAQ piece
again. No worries if you decline, but a response is appreciated.
… continued on next rock …
For the Quarterly, we’ve been asking for a short contributor bio.
Could we get one of these from you. Examples can be seen at the end
of each piece at the quarterly (http://bioteach.ubc.ca/quarterly/).
And I’m impressed with your visitor stats, it’s pretty much the same
as our http://bioteach.ubc.ca education site.
From: Dan Twyman
We get about 18,000 hits per day and can place your link on our site.
Can you place this link on your site?
http://www.artistwebsite.com
Index of contributors
Other Correspondence Pages
Date: 5/15/2005
Subj: Densa
My site is a “slum city of the mind”. Whether that is appropriate for
Densa is open to question, although I have my suspicions. The connection
is that it has a copy of “the densa quiz” of unknown and dubious provenance.
Having received several letters on the subject, I am now inclined to believe
that Densa has been independently invented several times. If you wish to
inform me about the incarnation whose birth you witnessed I am quite willing
to have my mind illuminated.
This is interesting. There are actually two different questions of invention
here. One is the origin of “Densa”. I opine that the term had multiple origins
– it’s too obvious. The other is the origin of the Densa quiz. In the nature
of things it must have had an original author (but see
“The Chameleon”
– http://richardhartersworld.com/cri_b/fiction/chameleon.html) and, if I apprehend correctly,
John D. Coons was the author. Do I have the right of it?
Return to index of contributors
Date: 5/23/2005
Subj: huh?
You’ve got me, boss. Offhand I would guess that the rabbi
dropped the scissors he used to clip coupons in the cement
while they were laying the floor for the new temple, but that’s
just idle speculation on my part. A bit of context would be
appropriate here.
Return to index of contributors
Date: 5/19/2005
Subj: TSCQ part IV beta is up
Thanks muchly for the notice. I browsed through the issue and
found it quite delightful. I shall commend it to my readers,
particularly to those who would enjoy it.
Return to index of contributors
Date: 5/20/2005
Subj: Brain Fart or Senior Moment?
<meta name="description" content="Table of contents of Richard Harter’s
World
for April 2005.">
<meta name="keywords" content="contents">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Contents for May 2005</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY bgcolor="#fffdf0">
<strong>
<center>
<h2>Contents for April 2005</h2>
</center>
But of course. They had April in Paris and April in Highmore this
year.
Return to index of contributors
Date: 5/19/2005
Subj: Your web site
Thank you. Continue to explore my site. There is much in it
that is amusing, including the pretensions of its webmaster.
Return to index of contributors
Date: 5/19/2005
Subj: Arun Ausley
My thought exactly.
Return to index of contributors
Date: 5/17/2005
Subj: On Not Being A Professional Poker Player
Sure, go ahead. You’re right – a search on “poker blog” on google
turns you up as number one. It also says that there are about
61,300 pages that mention “poker blog”. That, my friend, is a
truly scary thought.
Return to index of contributors
Date: 5/16/2005
Subj: New Site
Bad news; this isn’t the survivor show website. Try the CBS website.
However it was good to here from you; you sound like an interesting
chap. If you like meander about my website – there might be something
that tickles your fancy.
Return to index of contributors
Date: 5/5/2005
Subj: hi, dude, do you remember me ?
You have my sympathy. Let me know if you ever get it back.
Return to index of contributors
Date: 5/11/2005
Subj: somerhing i need badly
A good starting point is to read the postmodernism FAQ’s
by Van Piercy (http://www.tamilnation.org/oneworld/pmfaq.htm)
and Adam Blatner (http://www.blatner.com/adam/level2/pmodfaq.htm).
Return to index of contributors
Date: 5/12/2005
Subj: We are looking for selfadhesive paper
The specifications of the paper as below:
– Normal 80 gr vellum,acrylic adhesive.
– Roll Lenght : 1500 – 2000 M.
– Roll Wide : 25 cm
Do you suppose they wrote to me because they thought I was
stuck on myself.
Return to index of contributors
Date: 5/6/2005
Subj: Mate
I’m not quite in your age range, albeit I will
be there soon enough. However I do not live in
San Fernando Valley, never have lived in San
Fernando Valley, and have no intention of ever
living in San Fernando Valley. Add to this the
fact that I am quite happily attached, and I fear
that your interest, while flattering, may well
be misplaced.
Return to index of contributors
Date: 5/3/2005
Subj: Yet another question about hashing
I haven’t thought this out thoroughly but here are some thoughts. The first
is that linear probing with c=1 may be acceptable in this circumstance, the
point being that clumps are broken up by elements being from the lower section
to the upper section. If that doesn’t suffice we could make n odd (we can force
it to have convenient properties) and then select a power of two for the secondary
hash. Continuing on the same thought, force n to be relatively prime to 2 and 3,
and pick m a product of powers of 2 and 3. The catch here is that if n decreases
we don’t want to end up in a situation with m>n (m being the secondary hash).
We could bound m to be less than the initial n; again I’m not sure that this buys
us anything. I am confident that there is something clever that one can do but
I haven’t thought of it yet.
Return to index of contributors
Date: 5/4/2005
Subj: What ever became of Whirlwind…
I did a check, but didn’t turn up anything. Pity that. I suppose there
must be emulators out there for the Whirlwind. Surely there are hobbyist
programmers who program virtual versions of old machines.
Return to index of contributors
Date: 5/12/2005
Subj: why do you ignore me ?
No, you want your money right now. What you need
is to stop letting your computer get infected with
viruses.
Return to index of contributors
Date: 5/10/2005
Subj: Your Long overdue Payment
(2) The name that your cheque(Bank Draft) will bear.
(3) Your telephone number. This is for voice communication.
Mr. Ernest Ebi (Deputy Governor CBN)
www.cenbank.org
Very clever of you chaps to track me down. The odd thing is that
I have no recollection of anyone owing me nine and a half million
dollars. How utterly absent minded of me. I suspect somehow that
claiming my mislaid funds would involve some up front expenses on
my part. It’s a pity but it seems that I have no spare funds.
Apparently I just can’t afford to be rich.
Return to index of contributors
Date: 4/20/2005
Subj: Aqua shoes
The price : USD2.5/pr
The qty : 3,000prs
The price : USD1.80/pr
The qty : 10,000prs
The price : USD1.6/pr
The qty : over 20,000prs
http://hk.page.auctions.yahoo.com/hk/auction/1109079791?aucview=0x70
I dunno. The price looks good, but what in the hades are
aqua shoes and what would I do with 20,000 pairs?
Return to index of contributors
Date: 4/10/2005
Subj: 2004 Year in Review
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I don’t suppose they would take a post-dated check. For that matter
I reckon that they aren’t selling collector’s editions.
Return to index of contributors
Date: 4/28/2005
Subj: The little bull dog
Methinks you sent this to the wrong email address.
One never knows, though. I recall some of our
earlier correspondence.
Return to index of contributors
Date: 4/22/2005
Subj: your website
Now I shall have to search the web for metacognition (it occurs to me that that may be
an unfortunate phrasing.) The connection has been made in the fan community, particularly
in the early days of SF fandom. There is a novel by A.E. Van Vogt about superhumans
called slans that was enormously popular in the 1940’s; one of the slogans of the time
was “Fans are Slans”. There were people who really believed that SF was the cutting
edge of the future.
Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills. You know, like numchuck
skills, bowhunting skills, computer hacking skills…–Napoleon Dynamite
The great tragedy of my life is that they didn’t have computers when I was
young (rumors that they didn’t have gun powder are the basest of libels). If
they had I might well have been a big hit with the girls.
I may have read it or at least a summary of it. The “Theories of Theories of Mind”
volume has descriptions of the experiments and may contain P&M’s paper. If my
library weren’t in its usual state of disarray (it was well organized sometime
long ago in the last millennium) I would check and see.
Return to index of contributors
Date: 4/27/2005
Subj: permission to reprint (again)
Don’t complain. My site has over 2500 visitors a day; I keep geeting
notes from Earthlink about excess traffic.
Anyhow, a big part of why this happened, is that in collaboration
with some folks over at our Journalism school, we have just launched
a new project called The Science Creative Quarterly
(http://bioteach.ubc.ca/quarterly/) which aims to take in and present
science writing of all connotations.
I shall check it out. I expect it to be excellent.
(It is.)
Anyway, your creationist FAQ piece
(http://richardhartersworld.com/cri_d/cri/1996/crefaq.html) has always been a
favourite of mine, so I’m hoping to reprint it again in this new
format.
But of course you may reprint it.
I dunno, the request to create a short bio creates within me the almost
irresistable urge to compose some truly outrageous farrago. I shall
resist the urge, though, and write something that has verisimilitude.
Return to index of contributors
Richard Harter is an eclectic auto-didact, a man of letters and
software. By turns a mathematician, a software maven, and an
entrepeneur, he has retired to the wilds where he tends his garden
and his web site. He has a keen interest in science, the
philosophy of science, and science fiction, and professes to have
the wit not to confuse the three.
Will that do?
Date: 4/25/2005
Subj: topic
The Film Casting Web Site
It appears in the correspondence column where hordes of my readers will delight
in taking advantage of the many features you offer. Er, hordes may be as many
as one or two or even more. Still, publicity is publicity. As for putting a
link to my site, you may if you wish, but the truth is I am not excited by the
prospect.
Return to index of contributors
This page was last updated May 23, 2005.
It was moved August 6, 2007