Samsara's Blog

Article on Patenting Software

2006-10-15T12:05:00.000-07:00

I have posted a draft of an article entitled "You Can't Patent Software: Patenting Software Is Wrong" on my website at http://samsara.law.cwru.edu/patart.

I have been working on this, off and on, for years. Perhaps now I will have a little more time to pay attention to this blog.

TIAA-CREF computer problems

2006-09-29T11:04:00.000-07:00

This article was recently published on the RISKS e-mail list ( Risks-Forum Digest Tuesday 26 September 2006 Volume 24 : Issue 44):

Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2006 14:34:00 -0400
From: "Peter D. Junger"
Subject: TIAA-CREF Payment Delays Because of New Computer System
On 6 Sep I faxed the paperwork to TIAA-CREF requesting a withdrawal from my retirement account expecting that it might take as long as a week before the money was wired to my account. It is now 25 Sep and I am still waiting.
I have spoken to several consultants about this problem. The first just said that it should not have taken that long and that he would see if hecould get it expedited. The next consultant was more forthcoming and said that the delay was caused by the fact that TIAA-CREF was installing a newcomputer system. (I had earlier been told in another context that the old system was written in COBOL back in the 1960s.)
Later consultants told me that as a University's account is transferred to the new system, withdrawal applications from retirees from that University have to be processed manually, rather than by the computer system. That strongly suggests that as more and more accounts are transferred to the new system the delays will get longer and longer.
There apparently has been no public announcement of this problem. (At least I found nothing in a Google search.) When I mentioned this to one of the consultants, she said that information that there was going to be aswitch-over to a new system was sent to account holders last year, but, when I pointed out to her that that announcement said nothing about delays, she said that she did not believe that they had been anticipated.
When I asked what happened to people who couldn't make a mortgage payment or something like that I was told by one of the consultants that TIAA-CREF was reimbursing people who had to pay late charges because of the delay. He didn't say what they did for people whose credit reports were damaged or those who lost a deal because they could not come up with a down payment in time or something like that.
One of consultants also told me that it might be six months before the switch-over to the new system was complete.
The consultants, who were all very considerate, all said that they had no contact [with] the people responsible for the actual processing of the withdrawal applications.

A Congeries of Cons

2006-08-10T08:00:00.000-07:00

The other day I heard on the TV, while I was trying to take a nap, some talking head discussing how the Republicans had framed the word "liberal" so that it now has almost exclusively negative connotations and how the Democrats had not succeeded in coming up with s similar frame to use against the Republicans.

And that got me to thinking.

It seems to me that there is one term -- "Neocon" -- that describes a group of people on the right who -- what with the war in Iraq and all -- are almost universally despised. The trouble is, of course, that the Democrats can hardly get away with applying the label "Neocon" to all their opponents, for most of them, however distasteful they may be, are not exactly Neocons.

But, thinking that, I suddenly realized that even if they are not Neocons, all of those opponents can be framed as some sort of "cons" and justly smeared with the opprobrium that is attached to their "Neo" congeners.

So here is a list of "cons" of various sorts. (I have not bothered with definitions, since normally they will not be needed when the labels are applied.)

Neocon, Retrocon, Quasicon, Me-Me-Con, Mexicon, Texicon, Psuedocon, Econ, Geocon, Globulcon, Paleocon, Scardycon, Killercon, Wimpycon, Whoopsicon, Contracon, Lexicon, Hemi-Semi-Demi-Con, Republicon, Anticon, Greedycon, Anti-Americon, Bullycon, Bellycon, Jellycon, Parasiticcon, Crypticon, and Idioticon.

I could go on, but I'm sure that you get the idea.

Lieberman & Rovian Tactics

2006-08-09T10:07:00.000-07:00

Senator Lieberman lost the Connecticult Democratic primary to the almost unknown challenger Ned Lamont, and on the last day before the election Lieberman's website went down -- sort of.

Lieberman's staff immediately claimed that the site had been "hacked" and had been subjected to a Distributed Denial of Service Attack -- two inconsistent explanations of what went wrong (although it is possible that there were two separate attacks).

Lamont's staff reportedly offered Lieberman's staff space on their web server until the problem could be resolved, but Lamont never received any reply.

Instead, Lieberman accused Lamont's campaign of being responsible for the dastardly deed and accused Lamont of Rovian tactics, demanding a statemen from Lamont repudiating the hacking, a statement that apparently had already been issued by Lamont.

It appears that the most likely cause of the outage was that Lieberman had not purchased enough bandwidth to handle the demand on the last day of the election. In any event, the server has been back up for a long time -- and may never have been down -- although all it says now is:

This account is under construction Please check back soon. It will be available shortly. Thank you.

It should, however, only have taken an hour or two to get the web pages back up on the old server, or on a new one -- like Lamont's. The only explanations that anyone seems to be able to think of for this delay is that Lieberman's staff did not have any backups of the material on the web site or that Lieberman wants the site to stay down so that he can continue to accuse Lamont of hacking and Rovian tactics -- in other words that Lieberman's campaign was unbelievably incompetent or that Lieberman himself is using what he would call Rovian tactics.

I think the country is very lucky that Lamont won.

Circling Chicago

2006-06-01T08:51:00.000-07:00

I went to Santa Barbara over the Memorial Day weekend to see my mother.

The flight from Cleveland was uneventful--extremely and uncomfortably uneventful, since the connecting flight from Chicago to Los Angeles was delayed for six hours or so by bad weather between the two cities. An hour or so of the delay was even spent sitting on the runway at O'Hare, waiting for permission to take off.

The return flight was even more uneventful, since, because of thunder storms over Chigaco, I was some twelve hours late in getting back to Cleveland. I even had a four or five hour sleep, of sorts, in a chair at O'Hare, before I could get on a continuing flight to Cleveland.

Were that all, I do not think that I would comment on the trip.

There was, however, one happening that I find mildly interesting.

The thunder storms over Chicago lasted so long that the plane had to be diverted to Madison, Wisconsin for refueling--a process that took surprisinly little time. But then the plane just sat there while the pilot waited for the computer data that would tell him the weight of the fuel and where it was distributed in the plane and, I guess, other information that he needed before taking off again for Chicago.

Finally the rear door of the plane--a door that proclaimed that it was only to be opened in emergencies--opened and an agent came in carrying a large stack of computer print-outs, which was delivered to the captain up in the cockpit. And then the agent departed, again through the rear door, and, after a while, we took off again for Chicago.

I couldn't see whether the agent carrying the print-outs was wearing sneakers, but when I asked a flight attendant why they were using such a high-tech way of getting the data to the cockpit, she explained that there was way too much data to relay in any other fashion. So I guess that the good old sneaker net is still alive and well.

As the saying goes, "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway."

I've been busy

2006-05-16T08:39:00.000-07:00

I have been busy doing administrative and secretarial tasks at the Cleveland Buddhist Temple, trying to get the new computer at the Temple to work properly, and on my article about software patents that seems to be going so well that it suddenly needs to be completely reorganized.

What I had not really realized up to now is how totally lacking in logic and persuasiveness are the decisions of the Federal Circuit permitting software to be patented. It's shocking to me that almost everyone--including legal academics--have just accepted those opinions as stating the law even though they are directly contrary to earlier decisions of the Supreme Court.

To Nuke or Not to Nuke

2006-04-11T08:49:00.000-07:00

I find the news most confusing.

The President has labeled the reports that his administration is considering a nuclear attack on Iran as "wild speculation."

Now if this amounts to a denial, considering President Bush's reputation for honesty, it would seem to confirm the reports. On the other hand, considering the President's reputation for authorizing the leaking of classified materials whose contents he knew to be false, one would reasonably believe that the reporsts are false and intended to deceive either the Iranians or the American public--or both.

Somehow I am reminded of Nixon's claim when he was president that he wanted to frighten the Russians by making them think that he was crazy.

Minor Catastrophes

2006-04-11T08:08:00.000-07:00

As I recovered from the loss of my internet connection and the need to replace the tire shredded by a pothole, I had a new catastrophe of sorts.

My regular doctor had diagnosed a small skin cancer on my forehead and wanted me to go to a plastic surgeon in order to have it removed. This struck me as overkill, since a little scar would not be likely to harm my appearance. But there is no point in arguing with a doctor. So when my doctor gave me the name of a plastic surgeon--a certain Dr. Green--and his address and phone number and I dutifully made an appointment with him.

As it turned out, it was almost impossible--at least for me--to find the entrance to Dr. Green's office building, and I must have spent a least thirty minutes driving up and down the road on which that office fronts. I thus turned up for the appointment only three minutes before the scheduled time rather than a half hour early as I had planned. And I was, as one would expect, feeling very frazzled, although that did not seem to increase mv blood pressure.

Dr. Green turned out to be a very pleasant.

But he also turned out to be the wrong Dr. Green; he was an oncologist, not a plastic surgeon.

And that made me feel even more frazzled, although it was not, of course, as serious as having the wrong leg amputated or something like that.

I prety much spent the next day in bed and am by now almost completely recovered.

Internet Dependency

2006-04-03T12:03:00.000-07:00

The ADSL line for my computer at home went down for a couple of days and then it finally turned out, after it came back up, that, in our efforts to figure out what was wrong, we had changed the password. And figuring that out with the ISP took another couple of days.

That was a very frustrating period for me since, although the web pages and mailing lists that I maintain on a computer at CWRU law school were, fortunately, still up and running, I could not reach them. And, although I could work on the article that I am working on about software patents, I could use neither Google nor Lexis nor any other internet service to find the text of the law cases that I was trying to write about.

Fortunately I had a cold that allowed me to sleep a lot.

Software, Information, and Mental Processes

2006-03-17T10:49:00.000-08:00

Working on a paper pointing out that the Supreme Court has never reversed, or even questioned, its holding in Gottschalk v. Benson that computer programs--algorithms--cannot be patented and contending that that holding is correct, I find myself struggling once again to explain matters that, unlike the law, I know little about.

The Court, for example, said in that case that algorithms are not patentable because, although most processes, if original enough, are patentable, algorithms are mental processes. That, of course, raises questions about the nature of mental processes, questions that years of studying the law have hardly prepared me to answer. Other ontological questions raised directly or indirectly by Gottschalk are: "what is an idea?", "what is a number?", "are mathematical truths laws of nature?", and "what is information?".

And they, in turn, raise the ultimate question as to how one can possibly explain such issues to an audience of lawyers and, worse, legal academics.

Buzzards

2006-03-17T09:52:00.000-08:00

Two days ago, on March 15, as has happened according to legend on that date since 1819. the buzzards returned to Hinckley, Ohio. It certainly is true that a few buzzards were seen in Hinckley on that date, although whether this was the sighting of returning buzzards rather than of permanent residents is a matter not past dispute.

I don't think that I have ever been to Hinckley, which is on the Western side of the Cuyahoga river which I seldom cross. Still I find the legend of the returning buzzards, for some reason, quite pleasing, perhaps because I have also never been to San Juan Capistrano. where the swallows will return in a couple of days on March 19.

Copyrighing and Software

2006-03-11T07:10:00.000-08:00

Recently on the CyberProf list someone raised a question as to whether software should have been made subject to copyright.

Here is what I said in response:

Remeber that the Supreme Court has never held that software is copyrightable and that the copyright Act provides that: "In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work." Programs are algorithms, or implementations of algorithms, and thus are "ideas" as that term is used by the Court in Gottschalk v. Benson. Programs consist of "procedures" and are "processes" that run on processors. Programs clearly are "methods of operation"---they are methods of operating a computer. And programs are always, though usually only on a very small scale, discoveries: "Ah, that's how to do it," says the programmer to himself.

Buddhism: Science vs. Religion

2006-02-28T11:45:00.000-08:00

I have noticed repeated claims that science and religion deal with different types of issues and thus cannot come into conflict--or, though this is less often stated, be in agreement--with each other. Of late, such claims turn up chiefly in the context of the dispute over the teaching of so-called "Intelligent Design" and of evolution.

These claims rather trouble me as a would-be follower of the Buddhadharma, since I cannot help but notice that the idea that the world was created by an intelligent designer does not seem compatible with the Buddhist teachings and that the theory of evolution, on the other hand, is perfectly consistent with--and, in fact, a good example of--the truth of the basic teaching of dependent origination: this arises, therefore that arises.

And when one comes to the relatively recently recognized field of cognitive science it seems to me that the efforts of Buddhist practitioners to understand the workings of their minds cannot be distinguished in theory from the efforts of scientists to arrive at a similar understanding. Marvin Minsky's "Society of Mind", for example, strikes me as being an updated version of the metaphor of the chariot in the Milindapanha.

If it is establishing religion to teach intelligent design in the public schools, then why is the teaching of evolution in those schools not an establishment of (the Buddhist) religion?

I suppose that one answer could be that Buddhism is not a religion; but if that be the case what would happen to the tax exemption of institutions like the Cleveland Buddhist Temple?

May all beings be happy!

Mary Maudlin and Copyright

2006-02-28T10:04:00.000-08:00

There is a rather unusual copyright case going on in England right now. Two of the three authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, a purported historical account of the marriage of Jesus and Mary Magdalene and the subsequent history of their offspring, are suing the publisher of The Da Vinci Code, an historical novel---a work of fiction---for copyright infringement, claiming that the author of the latter work copied not the text, but the plot of the former.

Frankly I don't see how the plaintiffs can possibly win this case, unless, of course, they are able to prove that their purported work of history is actually a work of fiction.

While we are on the subject of the Magdelene--also known as Mary Maudlin--I can't resist quoting my favorite maudlin couplet describing her eyes:

Two walking baths; two weeping motions;
Portable, and compendious oceans.

I am sorry that I have the compulsion to afflict this upon you.

In compensation, let me quote Rilke quoting the Magdelene:

Pietà

So seh ich, Jesus, deine Füße wieder,
die damals eines Jünglings Füße waren,
da ich sie bang entkleidete und wusch;
wie standen sie verwirrt in meinen Haaren
und wie ein weißes Wild im Dornenbusch.
So seh ich deine niegeliebten Glieder
zum erstenmal in dieser Liebesnacht.
Wir legten uns noch nie zusammen nieder,
und nun wird nur bewundert und gewacht.
Doch, siehe, deine Hände sind zerrissen-:
Geliebter, nicht von mir, von meinen Bissen.
Dein Herz steht offen, und man kann hinein:
das hätte dürfen nur mein Eingang sein.
Nun bist du müde, und dein müder Mund
hat keine Lust zu meinem wehen Munde-.
O Jesus, Jesus, wann war unsre Stunde?
Wie gehn wir beide wunderlich zugrund.

More on Danish Cartoons

2006-02-11T10:40:00.000-08:00

Although I only posted my entry about the Danish paper's cartoons of Mohammed on January, 31 most of the fuss--republication, embassy burnings, riots, etc.--has occurred since then. At least the danger that I feared, the danger that all on-line copies of the cartoons would be disappeared, is no longer a real threat, even though few American newspapers or television shows have shown them to give their readers or viewers a clear idea of what all the fuss is---or at least originally was---about.

Once again, I posted my entry about the cartoons on January 31, and most of the fuss has arisen since then. But now it turns out that the cartoons, which were first published in Denmark in September, 2005 were republished in an Egyptian paper in October of that year.

See: http://egyptiansandmonkey.blogspot.com/2006/02/boycott-egypt.html

The affair grows stranger and stranger. CNN published an image of one of the cartoons after first obscuring it--as if it were a naked woman's breast--so that one could not see what it looked like. This inspired the Akron Beacon Journal to publish a cartoon making fun of CNN.

Making Fun of CNN

And then I was informed last night by a local TV news show that a local Cleveland-Akron area Muslim group was complaining about this cartoon, calling it "hate speech not free speech."

Now that's a bit much; I doubt that the cartoonist actually hates CNN.

Left Wing Hilary Clinton

2006-02-06T12:56:00.000-08:00

The Chairman of the Republican National Committee, Ken Mehlan, reportedly has said that Hilary Clinton is a representative of the left wing of her party.

This may well be true if one believes, as I do, that she actually is a Republican.

My Favorite Footnote

2006-02-06T11:21:00.000-08:00

My favorite footnote is footnote 8 in Robert Nozick's State, Anarchy, Utopia (1974) where he quotes an old Yiddish joke:

"Life is so terrible, it would be better never to have been born."

"Yes, but how many are so lucky? Not one in a thousand."

This takes on especial significance in the context of the Buddhist teaching that the goal of Buddhist practice is to free oneself---and others---from the cycle of rebirth.

Free Speech, Islam, and Cartoons

2006-01-31T12:55:00.000-08:00

The Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published several cartoons of Muhammad, including this one:

Cartoon of Muhammad as Terrorist

As I understand it, any depiction of a man or woman is forbidden by Islamic law and tradition, and pictures of Muhammad are considered especially blaspheomous. Making fun of Muhammad is even worse. And thus, throughout the Islamic world, there have been many protests, not only against the paper that published the cartoons, but also against the Danish government for failing to censure it.

And not only protests, but also boycotts against Danish goods.

As one who objects to censoring the Internet, whether by governments--including my own--or private individuals or organizations or by religious groups--and religious groups are, as this case shows, often the worst censors--I feel an obligation to make censored materials, that I normally would not publish, available on my web site and blog. My hope is that, if enough people publish censored materials on the web, the would-be censors will come to realize that their efforts are counter productive. And I guess that in this case we should all go out and buy some Danish butter--or butter cookies or Aalborg Aquavit.

Statistics

2006-01-26T08:55:00.000-08:00

Back during World War II when I was in Bakersfield, California and the third grade---back when ads for Camel cigarettes claimed that nine out of ten doctors smoke Camels---the word on our playground was that out of ten doctors who tried camels, nine went back to their wives.

More on the New Draft of the GPL

2006-01-25T09:50:00.000-08:00

I have received email messages from Eben Moglen, the General Counsel for the Free Software Foundation, in which he said that I could send him my comments on the draft of the new version of the GPL. He also said that the new version was drafted by himself and Richard Stallman, the founder of both the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation.

Even though my comments are not likely to be very helpful, I think that the GNU General Public License is of such extreme importance that I am going to try to create a PDF file containing the current draft marked up with my suggested revisions and also containing my other comments in footnotes.

I hope that when I finish--if I do--my marked-up version of the draft I will be able to make it available to the public on my web site, something that I dare not do without express permission from the Free Software Foundation, for the draft, rather surprisingly, provides:

Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.

That seems a rather strange limitation to be imposed by the Free Software Foundation, now doesn't it?

On the New Draft of the GPL

2006-01-19T13:32:00.000-08:00

One of the most important legal instruments relating to the writing and publication of software is the General Public License created by the Free Software Foundation.

The FSF has recently released a draft of a new version of the GPL and requested comments.

I find the wording of the draft most infelicitous as it is filled with ambiguities and inconsistent terminology. And I also discovered that the commenting process is pretty well unworkable, since one cannot, as far as I can tell, see at one time and place all of the comments that have already been made about a particular passage.

And, to make matters worse, when I tried to send an email message raising these matters to the person known only as "johns," who claims to be the sole author of all the documents on the FSF's web site that relate to this draft, I could not send the message, but instead was informed

Unable to send mail ... Recipient address rejected: User unknown in local recipient table

If the Free Software Foundation had stock, I think that I would be selling it short.

The Utility of Spying

2006-01-17T10:28:00.000-08:00

In today's New York Times there is an article entitled "Spy Agency Data After Sept. 11 Led F.B.I. to Dead Ends" by Lowell Bergman, Eric Lichtblau, Scott Shane and Don Van Natta Jr.

The article reports that the FBI's has complained that NSA's spying has produced a great deal of useless information.

The NSA's defense to this charge is that they have indeed produced a lot of information, although they apparently do not claim that any of it was useful for anything.

"I can say unequivocally that we have gotten information through this program that would not otherwise have been available," General Hayden said.

General Hayden is "the country's second-ranking intelligence official and the director of the N.S.A. when the [spying] program was started."

The Dual Nature of Computer Programs Redux

2006-01-07T10:51:00.000-08:00

In the first manifestation of this blog I wrote an entry on the Dual Nature of Computer Programs that touches on matters that still are of great concern to me as I struggle to make sense of the application of Patent Law and Copyright Law to computer programs.

I have, therefore, decided to repeat it here, omitting a few footnotes and references that can still, I hope, be found in the original.

As I have indicated before I believe that the inconsistent ways in which we think of computer programs as one of the causes of a great many--dare I say it?--nonsensical legal arguments as to why the government can legally forbid the publication of the text of those programs.

As I see it, the phrase ``computer program'' has two quite distinct primary meanings. One meaning refers to the text of the program that is made up of signs and symbols which may be fixed in some tangible medium of expression or transmitted as a stream of binary digits or other signals from one installation to another. The other meaning refers to the process that takes place inside a computer when the steps of the program are carried out.

An analogy might be to an ``orchestra program'': which could refer either to the notes--typically fixed on sheets of paper--that are to be played by the orchestra or to the actual production of the music by the orchestra.

But that analogy, I admit, does not seem seem very precise.

I was therefore extremely grateful when Teemu Pyyluoma told me, in a message posted on the Lit-Ideas mailing list, of the existence of the research program into ``The Dual Nature of Technical Artifacts''.

The following passages are quoted from a paper by Kroes & Mejiers, also named The Dual Nature of Technical Artifacts 4 Techné 6:2 Winter 2002.

In our thinking, speaking and doing we employ two basic conceptualizations of the world. On the one hand, we see the world as consisting of physical objects interacting through causal connections. On the other hand, we see it as consisting of agents (primarily human beings), who intentionally represent the world and act in it. The great successes of natural science have suggested to many that the physical or material conceptualization fits every part of the empirically accessible universe, including humans. This idea, however, has created serious problems for the intentional conceptualization. It suggests that mental states are causally inefficacious in human actions, or conversely, that human action is causally overdetermined by mental states as well as brain states. Nowadays a large part of the philosophy of mind is devoted to analyzing these types of problems.

Our research program, "The dual nature of technical artifacts", willaddress a set of problems that originate in the existence of these two conceptualizations. The intentional conceptualization applies not only to mental states of individual persons, but also to social entities, i.e., entities involving several persons, such as gangs, armies, banks, governments, countries, etc. And it stretches out in another direction, so to speak, to include (technical) artifacts, such as screwdrivers, spectrographs and skyscrapers. It is this category of technical artifacts on which the research program focuses. Its subject matter is the applicability of the two conceptualizations and their interrelatedness when human beings connect to the physical world in the creation of technical artifacts (artifacts designed by engineers). The problems encountered here are different from the ones in the philosophy of mind. In that discipline one problem among others is the existence of two alternative conceptualizations of mental states, where one seems to be superfluous in the explanation of human action. As will be explained below, the problem addressed here is the indispensability of both conceptualizations for understanding and explaining the nature of technical artifacts. This calls for an integrated account.

Technical artifacts are, at least prima facie, always physical objects, but they are also objects that have a certain function. Looked upon merely as physical objects, they fit into the physical or material conception of the world. Looked upon as functional objects, however, they do not. The concept of function never appears in physical descriptions of the world; it rather belongs to the intentional conceptualization. This is shown, for one thing, by the fact that attributions of function lend themselves to normative judgments artifacts can perform their function well or badly and normative statements make sense only within the intentional conceptualization. Technical artifacts thus have a dual nature: They cannot exhaustively be described within the physical conceptualization, since this has no place for their functional features, nor can they be described exhaustively within the intentional conceptualization, since their functionality must be realized in a physical structure that is adequate to it.

The category of technical artifacts is a neglected topic in philosophy [One of the exceptions is R.R.Dipert (1993, 1995)]. This is shown particularly in the philosophical treatment of the notion of function. Philosophical analysis of this concept virtually always centers on its use in biology, although such analyses admit that the concept was imported from the functionality of designed artifacts. One expects, then, a clear analysis of the functionality of artifacts to be available. Such an analysis, however, is missing to such an extent that even occasional attempts to remedy this lack take their departure from biology and are consequently laden with biological terminology (natural selection, survival), the relevance of which to an understanding of artifacts is doubtful. It is still a problem exactly how the intentional and the physical description of artifacts hang together. If functions are primarily seen as `added to' the physical substrate, or as realized in physical objects, then the question remains how these functions are related to the mental states of human individuals, which, after all, form the core of the intentional conceptualization. If functions are primarily seen as patterns of mental states, on the other hand, and exist, so to speak, in the heads of the designers and users of artifacts only, then it becomes somewhat mysterious how a function relates to the physical substrate in a particular artifact. But relating them is exactly what happens in the design of artifacts. So how well does the rather metaphorical idea that structure and function `come together' in the making of an artifact fit the engineering practice of designing? Does this imply that on the route toward the physical realization of a function we are speaking two languages the intentional and the physical at the same time and in a coherent way?

On the one hand, the problem is thus how physical structure and function are related to each other in artifacts and what the precise role of intentions is in relating them. On the other hand, it is equally a matter for further inquiry how technical artifacts are related to social objects and what the role of physical realizations is in distinguishing them. There are numerous social objects of which we also say that they are made by humans, e.g., codes of law or universities. Prima facie it seems that artifacts are always `kickable', whereas such `social artifacts' are not. But does this mean that for social artifacts the point of their physical realization is irrelevant? Moreover, there is also a category of artifacts, such as computer programs, that seem to share some features with technical artifacts and others with social artifacts. We have, so to speak, two `triangles' of basic concepts: The first is structure--function--intention, and the second is technical artifact--physical object--social artifact. The relations between these triads and among the elements making up each triad are to be further analyzed and clarified.

If the existence of this research project does not yet give us much aid towards understanding the dual--or triple or quadruple--nature of computer programs, at least it alerts us to the fact that there is a serious philosophical problem lurking there. Unfortunately, though, I have the impression that the courts have never been much good at resolving philosophical problems. But perhaps we can somehow persuade the courts and legal scholars and other members of the legal community that a computer program--computer code, at least when fixed in a tangible medium, is essentially the same as the text of a printed book and thus perhaps avoid worrying about the fact that both computer programs and books have dual natures.

And that reminds that there once was a cryptographic program that was actually printed as a book: PGP: Source Code and Internals by Philip R. Zimmermann, MIT Press (June 9, 1995),

Unfortunately, the program on the "Dual Nature of Technical Artifacts" seems to have expired, so I have little hope of finding answers there to the problems that puzzle me.

Teaching Intelligent Design

2006-01-02T10:07:00.000-08:00

On the morning of New Year's day I was watching--or, at least, listening to--a television show that purported to review--or at least mention--the important news stories of the year 2005 of the Common Era. (I suppose, in order to let you know where I am coming from, that I should confess that I have a tendency when I pronounce that phrase that it often comes out sounding like "the Common Error.") And it thus came to pass that I heard a newspaper columnist named "George Will" pronounce, in a most authoritative voice, that "Intelligent Design" should be taught in the schools, but not in science classes.

That, naturally enough, got me to wondering about where exactly Mr. Will thought that Intelligent Design should be taught: in Home Economics perhaps?

Since the proponents of Intelligent Design claim that it is a scientific subject, it is hard to conceive how it could be squeezed into a religion class, where a discussion of the term "God," for example, would hardly be improved by mentioning that some people have argued that there is scientific evidence of an intelligent designer of the world who is not absolutely, necessarily, what the term "God" refers to, anymore that it would be helpful to refer to polyester science in a study of Leviticus 19:19: "Ye shall keep my statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind: thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed: neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woolen come upon thee."

Wasps and I

2005-12-28T14:12:00.000-08:00

I have--as my father had before me--a certain limited immunity to insects. That is not to say that they would not bite or sting me, but that--given the choice--they would prefer to bite or sting someone else.

I first learned about this personal peculiarity when I was eleven or twelve and my family--and I--were vacationing at Cambria Pines in California. My father and I were hiking along the cliff above the ocean when he saw an apparently unoccupied paper wasp nest near the top of a large tree some thirty or more feet above the ground. He announced that he was going to get the nest.

I allowed as how I didn't think that that was a very good idea, an argument that my father did not find persuasive.

And--as one would expect--just as my father reached the wasp nest the wasps came pouring out.

I am proud to say that I just stood there until my father's feet hit the ground and then we took off running together.

And neither of us was stung.

And my father was proud that he had invented a new way of climbing down trees, which consisted simply of slapping each branch as it went by.

Some eight or nine years later, I was working as a driller's helper on a shallow water doodlebug crew--that is, a shallow water seismic exploration crew--around Bayou Teche in Louisiana. On that particular day the water got so shallow that we had to get out of our piroughs and wade through the swamp carrying the drill pipe on our shoulders. I wasn't very good at that and kept jamming the pipes that I was carrying into trees.

And after a while I jammed a pipe into a wasp nest in a tree, but I didn't at the time notice that. I just stood there, puzzled, while the rest of the crew--all Cajuns and all at home in swamps--danced around slapping themselves and cursing. So I asked them what was wrong and one of them replied, "Mosquitoes." . It took me some time to figure out what had happened.

I wasn't very popular that day. But I was the only one who did not get stung.

The Nightingales of Schweinfurth

2005-12-25T09:49:00.000-08:00

When I was in the Army I was stationed at Ledward Barracks--die alte Panzerkaserne--in Schweinfurth am Main in Franconia. Schweinfurth was an industrial city that had largely been destroyed in bombing raids during World War II. It's name did not sound any more attractive in German than it does in English, although the Schweinfurthers have a saying: "Es konnte noch schlimmer sein, es konnte Pfortsheim heissen."

There were few tourist attractions in Schweinfurth, although for some reason I did recall the other day that I had once been told that the island there in the middle of the Main river was famous for its nightingales.

And yet I wonder about that, for I cannot recollect ever having heard a nightingale. I remember cuckoos, but never a nightingale.

The Milkwagon and the Horse

2005-12-21T12:57:00.000-08:00

When we lived in Calgary in the late forties of the last century, milk was still delivered--unhomogenized--in bottles. In the winter the milk and cream in the bottle left on the back porch by the milkman would often freeze and frozen cream would stick out an inch or so from the top of the bottle.

The milkman would take a bottle or two of milk--or whatever the order was--from his wagon and deliver it to the back door and, while he did that, the horse that pulled the wagon would move on to the next house on the milkman's route. It was clear that the horse had the route memorized.

I often wondered whether the milkman could have found his way if the horse were given a vacation and a temporary substitute were placed in the wagon's traces for a time.

The Uncarved Block

2005-12-20T13:37:00.000-08:00

Taoists speak of the ``uncarved block'' that contains within itself all of the forms into which it can be carved, which somehow reminds me of Michelangelo's claim that he saw the figure in an uncarved block of marble and carved away at it until the figure was set free.

I have recently realized that a general purpose digital computer is like the uncarved block, for such a computer contains within itself everything that can be computed, just waiting, as it were, to be set free by the appropriate computer program.

If that realization is too romantic for your taste, then here is another way of formulating the same idea: Each general purpose digital computer contains the answer to every answerable mathematical question.

Now I suspect that most people reading this who are not familiar with the internal workings of computers, and some who are, will consider these claims to be ridiculous.

On the other hand, computer scientists, almost universally, accept the truth of the Church-Turing thesis that:

any calculation that is possible can be performed by an algorithm running on a computer, provided that sufficient time and storage space are available.

Wikipedia, Church-Turing Thesis

The ``algorithm'' here is a set of instructions telling the computer what to do. In other words, it is what we know more informally as a ``computer program.'' I should also note that a human computer, given paper and pencils enough and time, can also carry out---at least in theory---instructions to calculate anything that that can be calculated.

This matter is not only of philosophical, or mathematical, interest; it also, I submit, goes a long way toward explaining why the Supreme Court of the United States in Gottschalk v. Benson 409 U.S. 63 (1972) held that algorithms---instructions to a computer setting out a process for solving a mathematical problem---are not patentable, even though processes in general are, provided that they are useful, novel, and not obvious.

As I see it, algorithms correspond to questions such as: ``what is two and two?'' and questions are not patentable. The answer to the question---the solution to the mathematical problem---, on the other hand, is not novel and is in a very meaningful sense obvious, for all one has to do is ask a computer---instruct a computer---to answer the question and, if the question is answerable, the computer will answer it.

For those who are not that familiar with the workings of a computer, try asking Google ``What is pi times e times i squared?''---a question that conceivably is novel.

Google will reply ``pi times e times (i squared) = -8.53973422'' which is---approximately---true. That answer is not novel. It is a fact. It is something that is universally true. And universal truths are not patentable. The answer is, and always has been, lurking inside the computer---or computers---we call Google---and inside all other computers---the way that the image of Michelangelo's Pieta was once lurking unseen inside an uncarved block of stone.

In the Beginning Was the Plugboard

2005-12-16T14:02:00.000-08:00

Before computers---the machines, not the people---were progammable---that is, before they ould be instructed to reprogram themselves---and before they had central processing units or registers, they could be programmed by rewiring ``plugboards.''

Two Women Programming the Eniac

The first electronic computer in the United States is usually considered to have been the ENIAC, which could be reprogrammed by changing the wiring in a plugboard as is shown here. This apparently is what led to the perverse conclusion that the first computer programs were hardware, rather than that they were implemented in hardware (as all computer programs are that are not implemented in human wetware).

Computers and Mathematics

2005-12-14T13:07:00.000-08:00

Back in the early seventies of the last century I spent an academic year as a visitor at the Ohio State University College of Law in Columbus, Ohio and ate many of my lunches at the Faculty Club. Several times I had as a luncheon companion a physicist from the Battelle Memorial Institute, which is headquartered in Columbus.

One day the physicist and I got to talking about early computers--which meant computers back in the 1950's--and he told me this story.

Battelle had an early computer--it may well have been one that was programmed by moving plugs and jumpers around on a so-called ``breadboard''--that had only a few kilobytes of memory. And researchers at Battelle also had an equation that they wanted to solve, but the equation turned out to be a bit too large to fit into the memory of their computer. So the researchers--who I guess were physicists--asked one of the mathematicians at the Institute to see if he could simplify the equation enough to squeeze it into the computer's memory.

The next day the mathematician reported that he had been able to simplify the equation and that the result was: e.*

I assume that if the original equation had fit into the computer's memory, the computer would still be grinding away trying to solve the problem since the string of digits representing e is unending.

I suspect that there is some sort of moral here.

e is one of those special numbers in mathematics, like pi, that keeps showing up in all kinds of important places. For example, in Calculus, the function f(x) = c(e^x) for any constant c is the one function (aside from the zero function) that is its own derivative. It is the base of the natural logarithm, ln, and it is equal to the limit of (1 + 1/n)ⁿ as n goes to infinity....

Like Pi, e is an irrational number....

A Proof that e is Irrational

e is approximately equal to: 2.7182818284590452353602874713526.

My Mother and the Bear

2005-12-13T11:30:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time in the mid-forties of the last century, my parents and I were camping somewhere---I forget exactly where---in the Canadian Rockies. We had gone to sleep early---it's not easy to sit around and read by a campfire---and got up early. While making breakfast my mother complained that a dog had been sniffing at her through the canvas of the tent, and continued until she gave it a whack through the canvas saying, ``Go away you old dog.''

A little later someone from the next campsite came over and asked us, ``Did you see that bear sniffing around your tent this morning?''

I doubt that there are many others whose mother once gave a bear a whack on the nose.

The Higher Mathematics

2005-12-09T09:12:00.000-08:00

At the beginning of my freshman year at the College I was required to attend a series of lectures in Memorial Hall where the deans of the various graduate and professional schools told us what they were looking for in applicants and what undergraduate courses they required for admission.
Of all these lectures, the only one that I recall was the one by Erwin Griswald who was dean of the Law School.

I recall it not because I was later to attend the Law School, for that was not something that I as a freshman was planning to do, but because he said that the Law School had no prerequisites other than a bachelor's degree in something, a position that I immediately found very attractive.

And then, as I recall, Dean Griswold said that it really did not matter what one's major was, as long as it was not too applied and practical. He said that, if one insisted on a recommendation, classics would be a good major, as would be mathematics. And then he quoted the Cambridge Toast: ``God bless the higher mathematics and may they never be of the slightest use to anybody.''

The Supreme Court and the Law

2005-12-06T13:08:00.000-08:00

To paraphrase Justice Holmes, the law is an educated guess made today about what the courts will decide tomorrow. Whatever a philosopher may think of this definition, it does a pretty good job of describing what is meant when a lawyer says that the law is such and such.

One problem though should immediately be obvious: which courts are the ones that count?

In many cases, cases involving contracts and automobile accidents and leases and insurance policies and the ownership of cats, and things like that, the relevant courts are those of the states, not those of the federal government. On the other hand, in many other types of cases, especially those involving federal statutes and, of course, the federal Constitution, it is the federal courts that count. And, of course, in those federal cases there is only one court that ultimately counts: the Supreme Court of the United States.

I learned this lesson many years ago when I had taken my discharge from the Army overseas and, after spending six months in Germany, had secured a job as an associate with a Wall Street law firm: the firm's address in fact was ``One Wall Street.''

At that time the firm did very little litigation, but somehow, perhaps in a fit of absent mindedness, it had agreed to represent the defendant in a case where the plaintiff charged that our client had unfairly copied the appearance of the plaintiff's fingernail clippers. As the new boy in the office, I was given, as one of my assignments, the responsibility of doing research and writing memoranda about the unfair copying of fingernail clippers.

I thus found myself spending days on end in the reading room of the New York Public Library looking at yellowing copies of Messer und Scherer---that is, Knives and Scissors---a publication of the Solingen steel industry, research that for the most part supported the conclusion that if you have seen one fingernail clipper you have seen them all. I also spent a great deal of time in law libraries doing research about the law of unfair competition, and particularly about the tort of ``passing off'' one's goods as another's.

And then one morning, while I was reading advance sheets recounting what had happened recently in the Supreme Court, I came across a report that the Court had agreed to review two cases where the issue was whether state causes of action for ``passing off'' violated the exclusivity of the Patent Clause of the federal constitution. I immediately rushed---I think that I really did run---to the office of the partner who was in charge of the fingernail clipper case to tell him that the Supreme Court might soon decide that the plaintiff's cause of action was non-existent.

The partner in charge was not impressed. He knew enough about the law of unfair competition to know that the Supreme Court would never abolish it.

So it was with considerable satisfaction that, some months latter, I was able to phone that partner and the associates who were attending a hearing in Connecticut in the fingernail clipper case and inform them that the Supreme Court had just decided* that state law may not prohibit the copying of an article---such as a fingernail clipper---that is not patented or copyrighted.

I think that there is a moral there somewhere.

* In Sears, Roebuck & Co. v. Stiffel Company and Compco Corp. v. DayBrite Lighting, Inc.

Not Understanding About Bears

2005-12-05T08:22:00.000-08:00

During my senior year at the College I roomed with two juniors who were both Exeter graduates, one from Connecticut and one from California. I, on the other hand, was a graduate of Natrona Count High School in Casper, Wyoming, the school from which Vice President Cheney was later to graduate.

The roommate from Connecticut had spent the previous summer working in some national park in Wyoming---or, perhaps, Montana---and had grown, in the opinion of us two Westerners, inordinately fond of bears. Bears were for several weeks his primary subject of conversation. He had one story about a bear having been fed lye, a story that apparently haunted him, as tears would come to his eyes as he related it, which he did over and over again.

Now neither member of his audience approved of the feeding of lye to bears, but that was a time---like every other time that I remember---when there were many sad stories to be told about random acts of cruelty, and we had grown rather tired of that particular story, a tiredness that led, I fear, to our making certain---but long forgotten---sarcastic remarks.

Those remarks were not well received by our roommate from Connecticut, who yelled at us: ``YOU DAMNED EASTERNERS JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND ABOUT BEARS.''

Software Patents

2005-12-03T10:42:00.000-08:00

When I was in law school in the mid-fifties of the last century I never took---nor wanted to take---a course in patent law, but I did learn somehow one bit of legal folk wisdom about patents that was current at that time: ''All patents are valid and enforceable, except for those that have been reviewed by the Supreme Court; no patent that has been reviewed by the Supreme Court is valid or enforceable.''

Since the creation of the Federal Circuit in 1982, however, the Supreme Court has had occasion to decide very few patent cases because all the patent cases that would in the old days have been decided by the various different circuit courts of appeal are now all heard by the Federal Circuit and thus there is never any conflict between the circuits and a conflict between the circuits is the usual basis for the Supreme Court deciding to hear a case.

Over the years since 1982 the Federal Circuit has held repeatedly that innovations in computer software---in computer programs---can be patented. The leading case in the Federal Circuit on this subject is In re Alappat, 33 F3d 1526 (Fed. Cir., 1994), even though, way back in 1972, the Supreme Court had held in Gottschalk v. Benson, 409 U.S. 63 (1972), that a claim in a patent application that describes a computer program---a so-called ``algorithm''---is not patentable.

Thus we now have the strange situation where most lawyers, including most members of the patent bar, have to assume that software patents are valid and that the Federal Circuit has in effect overruled the decision of the Supreme Court in Benson even though the Court has never been very sympathetic when lower courts have refused to follow its decisions.

Of late, however, the Supreme Court has evidenced an increased willingness to review decisions of the Federal Circuit in patent cases. When one couples that with the fact that there is more and more evidence these days that software patents impede rather than support the progress of science and the useful arts, I am almost willing to predict that within the next few years the Supreme Court will once again declare that claims in patent applications describing computer programs are not patentable and that therefore so-called software patents are not valid.

It should be noted, however, that that prediction will not come true if no one is willing to bear the expense of taking such a challenge to the Supreme Court or if no one dares to raise in a petition or an appeal to the Supreme Court the fact that there is a conflict between the Court's holding in Benson and the Federal Circuit's holding in Alappat.

Swamps

2005-12-02T08:42:00.000-08:00

I am not fond of swamps and--as you shall see---I have good reason for disliking them, or, at least, for disliking working in them, although I am one who adamantly believes that they should be preserved in all their natural splendor and diversity---only without me.

A Computer Named Scotty

2005-11-30T10:34:00.000-08:00

I never was employed as a computer, but the summer that I let my father talk me, against my better judgment, into working as a gravity observer on a seismic exploration crew up in the Northwest Territories of Canada near the confluence of the Liard and the Nahanni rivers---a land that was primarily muskeg, which is just a fancy word for swamp---I worked for a computer who, because of his Glaswegian accent, was inevitably known as ``Scotty.''

It was my job to go slogging through the swamp with a gravity meter on my back and, every so often, when I came across a stake with certain markings placed on it by the surveyors, I would unsling the gravity meter, place it on a tripod, and look through an eye piece with a vernier dial, twisting the dial until a little bubble, very much like the bubble in a carpenter's level, appeared in the very center of the eyepiece. At that point I could, by reading the numbers on the dial, supposedly determine the force of gravity acting at that particular location to the nearest thousandth of a gal or so. [A gal is the centimeter-gram-second unit of acceleration, equal to one centimeter per second per second.] As I recall, being rather a klutz, I never could reach quite that degree of accuracy.

I was looking for buried riverbeds that could, if unaccounted for, mess up the seismic data. The gravity meter did a pretty good job of sensing the presence of a buried river bed, but it it also sensed other things like the variation in tidal forces that occurred as the moon made its journey around the earth. In order to filter out such unwanted noise I had to get back to the point where I made my first reading within two hours and make another reading and then Scotty, the computer, had to adjust my readings taking into account the drift that had taken place over the two hour period.

I was supposed to collect the raw data; Scotty was supposed to manipulate it. That is, after all, what computers are supposed to do: manipulate data. So I supplied the data that I had collected to him, and someone---a seismologist---gave Scotty instructions as to how he was to process that data. But there were actually a couple of evenings that Scotty handed me a slide rule and gave me some hasty instruction on how to use it in order to filter out the noise attributable to tidal forces and things like that that messed up the data I had collected.

Scotty just wanted me to recheck some computations that had already been done by someone else, but arguably that allows me to claim with at least some legitimacy that I myself was a computer for a couple of evenings. I'm not quite sure that I ever understood exactly what it was that I was doing on those evenings, other than sliding scales back and forth inside a slide rule, but that sliding did produce numbers which satisfied Scotty. After all, we computers are not required---or even encouraged---to understand what it is that we are doing.

I just followed the instructions that Scotty gave to me and those instructions were, by definition, instructions to a computer. It is, I think, worth noting that a set of instructions to a computer is exactly what our legal system defines as a ``computer program.'' It may even be worth remembering that the earliest computer programs were sets of instructions to human beings like Scotty and myself.

Unintelligent Design

2005-11-29T08:11:00.000-08:00

It seems to me that there is no way that one can be certain that the world as we think we know it, with all of its buzzing, booming complexity, was not designed---and created---by some sort of god or demiurge.

On the other hand, what seems absolutely clear---even though I have not seen any express mention of this by those who object to the teaching of so-called ``intelligent design''---is that such a design of the world---and of us---would have been remarkably unintelligent.

The first rule of any good design---of any intelligent design---is ``Keep It Simple,'' yet the proponents of ``Intelligent Design'' base their whole argument on the immense complexity of natural systems, an argument that, I submit, can only be called unintelligent and downright stupid.

Just consider ourselves with our veriform appendices, blind spots in the middle of our eyes, and confusingly complex sexual organs. If we are the product of design, surely in justice we should have a product liability suit against the designer.

The problem of unintelligent design is closely related to the problem of theodicy, the problem of how a benevolent and omnipotent God could create a world with so much evil in it, for how could an intelligent creator have made such a mess of it when it designed the world and us?

Cruel and Unusual Choices

2005-11-28T10:10:00.000-08:00

In the original version of this blog I wrote an entry in which I said:

There is an errand that I have been avoiding for several weeks, one that I dread: getting a bottle of shampoo at the drugstore.

The last time I did that I ended up in an incapacitating rage and, though I finally picked one bottle, my blood pressure probably remained high for several days.

That is not the way a follower of the Buddha Dharma is supposed to react. It is, however, the way that I reacted.

The problem was that there were far too many choices: thickening shampoos, conditioning shampoos, thinning shampoos, coloring shampoos,herbal shampoos, and Lord knows what else. Yet, as it happened, there was no bottle that I recognized as being a shampoo that I had used before. And so I had to make a choice among myriads of brands and versions of soap in a bottle adulterated with various types of gunk.

I did not dare just pick a bottle and have done with it, because with my luck it would turn---as it promised on the label---my remaining hair an interesting shade of green.

And so I had to read the fine print and think and dither and, inevitably, grow angrier and angrier.

As I think of that experience I grow angry all over again and find that in my most unawakened mood I want to kneecap anyone who claims that increasing the number of my--or the world's--choices makes me--or the world--better off.

You can imagine how infuriated I now am at the necessity of choosing between forty some different insurance company plans for the new Medicare drug benefit.

It hardly abates my rage that I know that if I do choose a plan the insurance company that I select can change the prices of the drugs it covers or even the type of drugs that it does cover whenever it likes. So the choice that I am confronted with is: which bait and switch con game should I choose to victimize me?

But if I am enraged, think of how others who, unlike myself, are not trained as lawyers and are not intimately familiar with the Internet, must feel about the program.

It is perhaps the cruelest piece of legislation to be passed in the last decade, although it would have to compete with the recently effective bankruptcy reform legislation.

It hardly helps that the Federal government is now running advertisements suggesting that us old folks should get our children to make the choices.for us, especially since many of us like myself don't have any children and many children---especially those whose parents are receiving Medicaid---don't have the skills necessary to make the choices for their parents.

People like myself who don't absolutely need the new drug benefits will often be able to choose---or pick, as I plan to do---some sort of drug benefit plan. On the other hand, those who really need the benefits are much less likely to be able to take advantage of the program.

I am reluctant to make political predictions, but the new Medicare drug benefit program is such a cruel and complex mess that I am pretty sure that it, rather than the Iraq war, will be the critical issue in the 2006 elections. I don't think that I will be alone in planning to vote against anyone who voted for that legislation.

Misleading Metaphors

2005-11-25T07:40:00.001-08:00

I am not sure that it required the writings of George Lakoff to reveal the fact that we cannot think about something new---some new concept or phenomenon---without first analogizing it to something more familiar that we think we know how to think about. I suspect, however, that we do owe Lakoff a great deal of thanks for making clear to us how those analogies are usually presented to us as unrecognized metaphors and how those metaphors control what we think---control what we can think---since they are probably as close as we can come to the unintelligible underlying buzzing, booming confusion of reality.

Electronic---that is, non-human---computers have, of course, been around for a while, but the nature of their inner workings and of the programs that they implement are matters that most lawyers---members of my profession---are as little likely to have actually experienced as, say, the composing of a sonata for piccolo and flugelhorn.

Thus, when lawyers are confronted with a problem involving computers and computer programs they have evidenced a strong tendency to discuss---and, presumably, think about---them in terms of wildly inappropriate metaphors.

The paradigmatic example of a lawyer---and, in fact, a judge---thus misconceiving the very nature of computers and computer programs is, I submit, the holding of Judge Gwin in the case of Junger---that's me---v. Daley---who was the United States Secretary of Commerce---that ``source code,'' the instructions written by a human being describing the actions to be performed by a computer, is not expression that is protected the First Amendment to the United States Constitution because it is ``a device, like embedded circuitry in a telephone''---which is the equivalent of claiming that a recipe is an entree like duck Montmorency and that therefore a cookbook is not entitled to First Amendment protection.

Not Recommended by Duncan Hines

2005-11-24T06:37:00.000-08:00

My father had, as I recall, few rules that he considered inviolable, but one was that one should never eat in a restaurant that was recommended by Duncan Hines.

Today, of course, the name ``Duncan Hines,'' if remembered at all, is going to be remembered as a brand of dessert mixes, but back in the early forties of the last century Duncan Hines was a traveling salesman, turned into a food critic, who went around writing books about restaurants that he had eaten at during his travels. To those restaurants that he found particularly praiseworthy he gave a sign saying ``Recommended by Duncan Hines,'' a sure sign according to my father that the food would be terrible but that the restrooms would be spotless.

Whether my father was correct or not in this judgment I cannot say from my own personal experience since at the time I was too young to go to restaurants by myself and I never as far as I know actually ate anything in a restaurant that admitted to having been recommended by Duncan Hines.

At that time we lived in Bakersfield---where I was born, though I do not like to admit it. As I recall there were only two restaurants in town that were worth going to to eat, but they were wonderful. Without any definite proof---proving a negative is notoriously difficult---, I am sure that neither were ever recommended by Duncan Hines, or by any other food critic for that matter.

One was Mexican---what is now known as a taqueria---that was located in a shack with dirt floors not only on the wrong side of the railroad tracks but right up next to them. I do not remember what they served besides tacos, but I do recall that all the food was wonderful.

That restaurant was so successful that a few years later the owners were able to retire and go back to Mexico.

At the time taquerias were not common it the States, but now it is possible to find---although not in Cleveland where I now live---similar shacks with dirt floors that offer wonderful food: for example, La Super-Rica Taqueria on Milpas street in Santa Barbara, the favorite taqueria of the late Julia Childs, who had infinitely better taste than Duncan Hines.

The other restaurant was in a Basque sheepherders hotel that I had long assumed had also vanished years ago. A little research though reveals that the Noriega Hotel, which was founded in 1893, still survives and that Basque food is still served there at communal tables just as I remember it, with only one sitting for dinner, although I gather that the hotel itself no longer serves as a rooming house for Basque shepherds.

I am not sure that the dishes remain the same and am not likely now to visit it in hopes of refreshing my recollection. What I do vaguely remember is that the spinach was wonderful, but mostly I remember the wine, a dry and dusty red that in memory at least tasted rather like a red version of a Frankenwein, though perhaps that recollection is colored by the wine skins that hung on the walls in the hotel's dining room that now makes me think of the original meaning of the Bocksbeutel* that is the traditional flask for Franconian wines.

* ``Goat's scrotum''

Classification of Animals

2005-11-22T11:27:00.001-08:00

When I consider my recollections of various animals, I am inevitably re- minded of the classification of animals that Borges in his essay "The Ana- lytical Language of John Wilkins" attributes to a certain Dr. Franz Kuhn who in turn attributes it to a certain Chinese encyclopedia entitled Celes- tial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge where it is written that animals are divided into:

(a) those that belong to the Emperor,
(b) embalmed ones,
(c) those that are trained,
(d) suckling pigs,
(e) mermaids,
(f) fabulous ones,
(g) stray dogs,
(h) those that are included in this classification,
(i) those that tremble as if they were mad,
(j) innumerable ones,
(k) those drawn with a very fine camel's-hair brush,
(l) others,
(m) those that have just broken a flower vase,
(n) those that resemble flies from a distance.

Giving Thanks for the Free Market

2005-11-22T08:57:00.000-08:00

When I gave a talk the other day at an interfaith service about thanksgiving, all of the other speakers, with one exception, confined themselves to reading passages about giving thanks to a monotheistic creator god and to its---or, as they put it, ``his''---creation. The exception was the Rabbi.

The Rabbi read a passage from the Talmud that describes how---my memory is a bit vague here, but if I have the details wrong I am sure that I still recall the general thrust of the story.... The Rabbi read a passage from the Talmud that describes how the author owed thanks to many different people for the meal that he ate: he owed thanks to the farmer who raised the crops, the merchant who sold the farmer the seeds, the carter who brought the crop to market, the merchant who sold the food, and on, and on.

Suddenly my ears were hearing that we should give thanks to all those upon whom we depend in a recognition of our interdependency; my ears were hearing the functional equivalent of a buddhist Dharma talk.

And then the Rabbi went on and said that today we owe thanks to many more people on whom our meals depend---the fertilizer company, the shipper who sends the food from Asia or South America, the grocery wholesalers, the advertising agencies that advertise the availability of the groceries, and so on. (I am not sure that the Rabbi gave any of those particular examples, but they give a fair idea of what he was saying.)

And then the Rabbi said that today we owe our thanks for our meals and for all who make them possible to the ``free enterprise system.''

And suddenly my ears were hearing what might well be called an ``anti-Dharma'' talk.

In the first place, the so-called free enterprise system depends on a very limited kind of interdependency---a dependency only on human beings wealthy enough to take part in the ``free market''---that does not include the birds and the bees and the fish and all the animals and plants and swamps and fields and mountains and rocks and rivers and oceans upon which we also depend, and who depend on us.

In the second place, the free enterprise system brings us many things for which we have no reason to be grateful: global warming, vanishing habitats, Walmarts, and telemarketers.

From the viewpoint of a follower of the Buddhadharma---a follower of the Buddha's teachings---the great failing of the free market system is that it depends on the greed of the individuals and corporations who are the players in the market. Just imagine the economic catastrophe that would result if everyone decided that they have enough already and simply do not want anything for Christmas that they do not already have.

The whole justification for the free market system is that it somehow makes each of us better off by giving us the opportunity to satisfy more and more of our wants.

The Buddha's teachings on the other hand are that we are made better off---and all who depend on us are made better off---if we simply do not want so much.

The Local Consequences of Global Warming

2005-11-19T08:07:00.000-08:00

I turned on the local public television station for a moment in the middle of the night last night and learned that the polar bears are hungry and endangered. The weather is so warm this year that the acrtic ice is a month late in forming and until the sea freezes the polar bears can't go out on the ice hunting for seals for their dinner.

This morning I awoke to the realization that we could, if not solve, at least ameliorate two of our environmental problems by feeding Republicans to the bears.

Giving Thanks

2005-11-18T14:34:00.000-08:00

Here is a talk that I plan to give on Sunday at an interfaith Thanksgiving service at a Presbyterian church:

As I understand it, my charge here this afternoon is to read or recite some passage from the literature of my school of Buddhism, which is Jodo Shin Shu---the True School of the Pure Land---, which is the tradition of the Cleveland Buddhist Temple.

So here goes:

NAMO AMIDA BUTSU. NAMO AMIDA BUTSU. NAMO AMIDA BUTSU.

Of course, since I recited that in my approximation of the Japanese pronunciation of a Sanskrit phrase, I suppose that I owe you some sort of explanation.

So here it is.

There are many different schools of Buddhism, perhaps as many schools as there are Buddhists, for there is nothing that one is required to believe to be a Buddhist and each of us can only follow our own path.

But one thing that almost all Buddhists have in common is that they have many reasons for giving thanks. Giving thanks is a basic part of Buddhist practices: thanks to our parents, thanks to our friends, thanks to the lunch we ate today, thanks to things just as they are, and especially thanks to the Buddha for the Buddha's teachings.

Now the central teachings of the Buddha are that all things are impermanent, that all things are interdependent, and that no thing, no person, has an independent essence---that no person has an independent self. The Buddha teaches us that as a result of these truths that anyone---and that means every one of us---who clings to impermanent things, and especially to the idea that one has an independent self, is going to be disappointed and unhappy.

And finally the Buddha teaches that, if you don't want to be unhappy, then you are going to have to truly get rid of the ignorant belief that you have a separate self that exists somehow apart from that of others. And, of course, since that means that you must recognize the fact that you are inextricably interconnected with others, it requires that you not only want to attain your own happiness but that you want all beings to be happy.

And so the goal of all Buddhist practices is to attain wisdom and compassion. The wisdom to free oneself from the fetters of one's ignorance and greed and the compassion to wish that same freedom for all others.

But Shin Buddhists like myself, ordinary ignorant people filled with blind passions, have to recognize that we simply lack the capacity to free ourselves from the bonds of our ignorance and greed.

Now the usual translation of NAMO AMIDA BUTSU is: ``I am one with Amida Buddha---I am one with the Buddha of Infinite Light and Life---I am one with the infinite wisdom and compassion that surrounds me.''

But for an ignorant person like myself it is more likely at first to be a cry of existential despair.

We are, however, taught in the Shin tradition that if we listen carefully to NAMO AMIDA BUTSU we will hear Amida Buddha calling us to entrust ourselves to the wisdom and compassion that surrounds us. And when we truly hear that call, then NAMO AMIDA BUTSU becomes: ``Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.'' Every day becomes a day of thanksgiving. Every moment becomes an eternity of thanksgiving.

NAMO AMIDA BUTSU. NAMO AMIDA BUTSU. NAMO AMIDA BUTSU.

The Computer Who Couldn't Compute

2005-11-17T13:12:00.000-08:00

The teacher who supposedly taught me plain geometry in my sophomore year at Natrona County High School worked during the summer vacation as a computer for my father. That was back in the days when ``computer'' was a recognized job description like ``jug hustler'' and ``gravity observer''---both of which were jobs that I actually have held.

It was fortunate for Alan---who is now an emeritus processor of computer science---and myself that we found it easy to work with axiomatic systems, and thus were able to teach ourselves geometry, since it was quite clear to us that our teacher really did not understand that sort of thing. I don't know if any of the others in the class really learned anything from him. In fact, my father was convinced that he simply could not compute, that he could not follow the instructions that were given to him in his temporary capacity as a computer.

I, on the other hand, have always found that type of ``computing'' to come quite easily, and so, eight years later when my evidence teacher in law school taught us evidence as an axiomatic system, I found it easy to do very well on the final exam without having to do any studying at all. Of course, at that time, I did not realize that I was computing something, for no computations were involved.

That I would have made a good computer is, of course, nothing for which I can take any credit, anymore that I can be condemned for not being able to spell. Nor, I suppose, could my old teacher have been blamed for the fact that he couldn't compute.

Ordinateurs et Informatique

2005-11-17T13:07:00.000-08:00

The French they have a word for it: ``un ordinateur,'' which I suppose refers to something that orders things, that puts things into an order. We, and the rest of world, now call those somethings ``computers,'' although back in the mid-sixties my English-German dictionary translated ``computer'' as ``ein Hollerithmaschine'' in honor of the punch card calculators that were invented by Hermann Hollerith back in 1886.

I use that French name here for the gadgets---if not the people---that we call ``computers'' in the hope that it will jar us out of the misleading stereotype that all that computers can do, or, at least, what they primarily do do, is compute.

The French have another useful word---that sometimes appears in other languages, including English: ''informatique,'' which refers to what we can only call, in long-winded fashion: ``the science of information processing,'' which is not quite the same thing as the field of study that we call ``computer science.'' .

I shall be including here some of my recollections of my collisions with ordinateurs and informatique, although I shall say nothing further about the time that I actually tripped over a computer.

I am far too old to be able to think that ordinateurs are simply an ever-existing part of the environment, like chairs and horses and milkwagons. In fact, the first computers that I had to deal with were not the machines that the French call ``ordinateurs,'' but rather human---all too human---beings.

On Not Seeing the Rock of Gibralter

2005-11-17T12:54:00.000-08:00

I have no memory of not seeing most of things that I have not seen, like the Virginia Falls on the Nahanni River. In fact, until I checked it out just now, I even misremembered the name of those falls, thinking that their name was the same as that of the better known Victoria Falls in Africa, which I have also never seen and have no recollection of not seeing.

On the other hand, I do have a most distinct recollection of not seeing the Rock of Gibraltar.

It was dark outside and I was sleeping happily in my bunk---although, of course, having been asleep when the memory starts I do not actually remember that happiness---and then my father came into the cabin and woke me up, to a rather limited extent, and held me up to the porthole and told me that we were passing by the Rock of Gibraltar.

Wanting only to go back to sleep, I fear that I had no interest in seeing a rock, even though my father, who was a geologist, was so enthusiastic about seeing it. My father was enthusiastic about a lot of rocks that, at the age of three at least, raised no corresponding enthusiasm in myself. If you had asked me then I doubt that I could have put my response to the sight of a rock into such precise words, but I am pretty sure that my position was that if you have seen one rock you have seen them all.

And, in any event, I did not see any rock at all, but only a faint reflection of myself on the inner surface of the porthole. So I said that I saw it, wanting to get back to sleep, and my father put me down and I got back into my bunk and that is all that I recall of that. I guess that I went right back to sleep.

Introduction

2005-11-17T12:00:00.000-08:00

This weblog is a continuation of the blog that I started and still maintain at <http://samsara.law.cwru.edu/blog/>. I have not, however contributed to that blog in more than a year, having been interrupted when I came down first with a bad cold and then with a book about Computing and the Law, a book that stubbornly resists completion. I have been writing that book using PDFLaTeX and was writing the blog using LaTeX2html and, being a purist, without any blogging tools like blogger. Working on both the book and the blog seemed to be a bit too much.

But now I have come down with still another book: a collection of recollections of the sort that almost demand being recorded in a blog. And so I have given in and started this new blog, which I hope will be easier to write and maintain than the old one was.

Obviously I still have a lot to learn about blogging.