I’ve recently been pursuing the possibility of voting in the upcoming US presidential election, since I am a US citizen. The trickiness is that I have never lived in the US but am a citizen by virtue of my parent who was born there.

The UOCAVA protects absentee voting rights of some citizens overseas, including those who have never lived there.

Here’s where I’ve been looking; perhaps it will help you if you’re also considering voting absentee.

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This is kinda old, I think, but it’s pretty great. A rant by Bret Victor on the Future of Interaction Design.

From the rant:

... There’s a reason that our fingertips have some of the densest areas of nerve endings on the body. This is how we experience the world close-up. This is how our tools talk to us. The sense of touch is essential to everything that humans have called “work” for millions of years.

Now, take out your favorite Magical And Revolutionary Technology Device. Use it for a bit.

What did you feel? Did it feel glassy? Did it have no connection whatsoever with the task you were performing? ...

Go read the rest!

Time for another podcast recommendation!

This time it’s for Robert M. Price’s show The Human Bible. It’s a show where theologian Dr. Robert M. Price discusses topics in biblical criticism and answers listener questions using his vast knowledge of biblical and Christian history. Best of all, he comes from a secular perspective, understanding the text as a human creation, not one inspired by a god. And yet as a former Baptist pastor he has insight into the biblical literalist mindset.

In my formative years I was a great fan of Reginald Finley Sr.'s The Infidel Guy Show. Robert Price’s “Bible Geek” episodes of that show were some of my favourites — his great voice, his quiet sense of humour, his breadth of knowledge. His new show here is much the same, though unfortunately without Reginald Finley’s irreverent co-hosting.

I’ve only got an amateur interest in biblical criticism, so I’ve got no way to assess whether this guy knows what he’s talking about or is respected in his field, but he sure sounds like an expert.

I want to describe an interesting experience I had recently. Something which completely changed my experience of a piece of art and something which is almost unique to the medium of video games.

The other day I was pointed towards Souvenir, a work-in-progress from MFA students Robert Yang, Mohini Dutta, and Ben Norskov. In the creators’ words:

Souvenir is a first-person video game about growing up and leaving home. The disorientation of becoming an adult is reflected in the surreal M.C. Escher-inspired world with multiple gravities.

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Despite the weird title, this is a pretty interesting show from the BBC, presented by Lauren Beukes.

The BBC sometimes randomly removes its programs from online, so I’ll also post it here. (Apologies for any random interface sounds. Soundflower is the new radio-casette player.)

Read this old, unsurprising report in New Scientist. From the article:

Automated trading ...has come to account for more than half of trades in many markets around the globe. ...Because of the finite speed of light, trading speed depends on where you are sitting. ...“The basic insight,” says Wissner-Gross, “is that the optimal location lets the trader exploit fluctuations equally on both exchanges.” ...“This shows that the technological arms race to extract every penny from high-frequency mechanical arbitrage will soon reach its ultimate limits,” says physicist and hedge-fund manager Jean-Philippe Bouchaud

If this is how money and the free markets work now, I’m pretty sure we no longer know what words mean.

Here’s what I’m doing this week: the 28th annual Mathematical Foundations of Programming Semantics conference. I am presenting a paper there, “A graphical foundation for schedules”, joint work with my PhD supervisors Guy McCusker and John Power. There’s a preliminary version of the paper which will eventually appear in ENTCS. The talk had slides, though they contained unnecessary illustrative animations which are not there on the pdf.

Tea is more complicated than I thought...

I saw this letter on Twitter this morning:

The annual Sunday Times Rich List yields four very important conclusions for the governance of Britain (Report, Weekend, 28 April). It shows that the richest 1,000 persons, just 0.003% of the adult population, increased their wealth over the last three years by £155bn. That is enough for themselves alone to pay off the entire current UK budget deficit and still leave them with £30bn to spare.

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