As someone who grew up mainly in the 90s, many of the societal norms I learned can be attributed to one of two main sources: Cool (e.g., Saved by the Bell and The Fresh Prince) and Uncool (e.g., Full House) TV shows. Although many positive social changes have been introduced over the last half century, as taught by mother TV, I think there are some supposed proscriptions that attempt to redefine what the dictionary already defines clearly. 

For example, one might conclude that it is sexist to use the word “he” to refer to an individual of unknown gender.  I have had english teachers attempt to codify a style rule for this situation, so that you use “they” to refer to such an individual; others have suggested using the more prolix “an individual” or “the person.”  The problem with using “they” is that “they” is plural, where “he” is attempting to address something in the singular.  The other suggestions violate the law of syllabic conservation.

“He” or “she” can certainly be used as anaphora.  Why not as a generic reference?  The truth is, you don’t have to reason about it: Webster already defines “he” as “used to refer to a person of unspecified sex.” By the way, “she” also includes the same definition allowing for gender-neutral references.  

PS, I got the definition while reading DeGroot “Probability and Statistics”, 2nd ed.  

I have been wanting to write a bit about my experience as a computer scientist who switched to Mac about 2 years ago.  I bought a MacBook Pro after  talking with a coworker at the INL.  As most people, I had a bunch of misconceptions about the Macs shortcomings.  Most of all, I knew macs used PowerPCs – and although these seemed like cool chips from a nerd standpoint, I saw no compelling reason to switch.  But when Apple released its first iteration of the MacBook Pro, with the Intel Core Duo, I was thouroughly impressed with the whole package.  It was attractive – and had a whopping two cores (I am sure when my kids have 64 cores in their laptops two cores will seem a paltry amount). When I ordered one in August, 2006, I watched it ship from China – it felt like I was having a supercomputer delivered to my doorstep.  On top of that, I knew it was a good looking, quite laptop – all aesthetical parameters that have meant much more to me as I have grown older (I hate loud fans with a passion).

First some background.  I grew up as a nerd.  I tackled the most inane nerd tasks at an early age – even doing database applications in middle school (boooring).  That said, by the time I had decided to get a Mac I was not the same breed of nerd.  Fans drive me crazy – and I don’t care how powerful a computer is, I want it to have a bright screen, be quiet, powerful, and capable.  I like programming and Unix, but there are certain tasks, as a long time linux user, that I find repugnant – namely, rebuilding your kernel.  That’s a fun excercise once or twice, but when it becomes a useful skill for daily computer use in a particular OS, as it seems to be in Linux, I question whether that OS is ready for mainstream use.

How has the Mac measured up?  Truth is, it has meet my high hopes for it.  Here’s a list of Pros and Cons:

Pros:

• It IS Unix.  It has the full suite of Unix tools, most of them open source.  It uses GCC.  It has a great Terminal and comes with Bash.  Its POSIX, BSD, and has done everything that I have ever expected a UNIX to do.  For many open source apps, if there are slight tweaks that need to be made to the source, one can easily download mac ports, and install apps in much the same way as with apt-get.  Bottom line: flawless unix environment.
• It IS beautiful.  Or, as steve Jobs would say, “gorgeous.”  The keyboard lights up in the dark.  The screen is bright – even after 1.8 years. It is about noticeably  quieter than most laptops Ive put it next to.  The windowing environment makes Microsoft Windows look like a bad dream. Everything scrolls smoothly, looks slick, and works well together.  
• It IS capable.  Lets face it, its Intel Inside.  It uses a standard intel chipset with some Apple BIOS.  But while the processor is standard Intel, the layout is definitely Apple – all laid out in the cleanest, cleverst, thinnest package.  As for the OS, the kernel OS X sports works wonders. I regularly have a dozen browser windows, the XCode development environment, NeoOffice (Open Office variant for OS X), iTunes, Mail, iPhoto, Gimp, and Final CutExpress all open at once – and it all runs smooth as butter.  Whatever they are doing to make it seem so smooth, they have me fooled. 
• It IS upgradeable.  Even in a laptop!  I have doubled the ram, and just yesterday, using no “extra” tools, cloned my harddrive onto a new one that is 3x as big – all went flawlessly (even though I voided the warranty by opening the box myself.  Hey, Im not gonna let someone else do it if I can do it myself)
• It IS different.  Apple does things differently.  They follow an 80% rule – they show the features that 80% of users want. Some people, even Mac Users, have complained, e.g., about the lack of resize handles around all sides of an application window.  I simply do not care about that.  Some people complain about a lack of games on the Mac.  In my opinion, computer games are a total waste of time (though I am sooo grateful to all the parents who buy their goober kids the latest video cards and drive down the price on fast graphics hardware for me to develop cool visualization applications)

This is my version of Cristofori’s Dream by David Lanz.  I created this using garage band, making each note individually.  Conclusion: the real version, played by a human (such as David Lanz) has much more emotion and character to it.  

A friend tells me he is getting ready to sign on as an eXfuze drink distributor.  In his explanation of the company, he named a few fruits I had never heard of. Not wanting to get left in the dust (yet again) about some new trend, I decided to do “light” research on some of the supposedly salutary effects of the fruit drinks this company is pushing.  Here’s what I found on the “7+” group of fruits they market:

•  Fucoidan – From brown seaweed. eXfuze’s site compares it nutritional value as equal to breast milk.  Many reports indicate it is healthful.
• Mangosteen – The point of interest here is a group of organic compounds called Xanthones, found in the hard shell of the fruit.  On the one hand, these compounds can be used for insecticides, on the other hand lots of people say they have healthful effects.
• Sea buckthorn – Apparently very high concentration of Vitamin C (much higher than, say, and orange.)  Lots of other supposed good acids.
• Noni – a potato sized fruit, lots of vitamin C and fiber.  Several medical reports indicate it is high in potassium, a problem for people with kidney problems; also, it may contain levels of toxicity dangerous to some parts of the body.
• Goji – A cute berry loaded with tons of amino acids and vitamins.  Reports indicate many of its claims, such as preventing cancer, have been been debunked.
• Acai – Extremely high in dietary fiber. Lots of antioxidants. 
• Gac – More lypotene than tomatoes, more beta-carotine than carrots.

In all, none of these fruits seem like they will do you harm – except to your pocketbook.   It isn’t clear, however, that any of these items are any more salutary than any other fruit.

These quotes by Emerson could almost stand on their own, if such a thing could be said. 

It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. 

And this one:

 No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.

Not that people cannot change, but there seems very little evidence that they will unless they – even in the minutest way – wish to do so. 

At one point, I wanted to connect from my MacBook Pro (using OS X Leopard 10.5.1)  to our OS X server’s Samba shares from off campus.  The only problem is that the server only allows SSH connections off campus.  This is all you need, however, to create a tunnel and connect to the windows shares.   To create the tunnel, do

 sudo ssh user@servername -L localhost:139:servername:139 

The next part involves mounting the share, which Leopard won’t let you do from the Finder (it gives the error message “This file server is running on your machine. Please access the volumes and files locally.” )  That’s ok, you can get around this by opening the terminal and typing the following commands:

1. sudo mkdir /Volumes/sharename 
2. sudo mount_smbfs //username:password@localhost/sharename /Volumes/sharename

 Note that in my case I wanted to have a subdirectory on the share mounted, so in place of command 2 above, I typed (all one line):  

sudo mount_smbfs //username:password@localhost/sharename/subdir /Volumes/sharename  

And it worked!  I then used this share to do my backup using Time Machine.  Time Machine will let you backup to network shares if you type the following at the terminal (all one line):

defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1″