Oh God, what have I done??

I'm really seriously beginning to rethink this whole engineering thing. After my last little meltdown, I finally got the thing working that I had to get working and everything was going okay for a while. I went to some classes. I actually enjoy my classes (except DSP). I was beginning to change my tune, thinking that research might not be such a bad fate after all.

But now I'm back in it, deeper than ever. What is it this time, you ask? Well, I have this project due tomorrow for my Pattern Recognition course. The project consists of a web site and a Java applet. The website is done. I think it's pretty good. The Java applet on the other hand? Well, that's where the problem lies. I haven't started it. Well, no, that's not quite true. I tried to start it. I just very quickly realized that writing a Java applet isn't quite as easy as I was hoping when I left it until the night before it was due. I was planning to do an all-nighter tonight. I knew it was stupid, but I pushed that to the back of my mind. After all, is it any different from my undergraduate thesis, which I also left until the night before, in large part?

Well, unfortunately it is different. At least for a thesis, you can just write some bullshit. It might not get you a good mark (and it didn't), but it will get you a mark. Bullshitting Java code is impossible. The problem is twofold: 1) I may have written a lot of Java code in my day, but for one, that was a long time ago, and for two, I never did anything with a GUI. And it turns out that doing GUIs in Java is a lot harder than it is in Visual Basic or Delphi like I used to do. The fact is that it might not matter that much anyway, because 2) I have no idea what to do for the applet anyway! My topic is musical meter recognition. It's not exactly something that lends itself to a snappy little Java demo. It was a positively terrible choice for a project. This is all definitely reminiscent of my undergraduate thesis, where I screwed myself over by picking a really dumb topic that I don't care about and then leaving it until the last minute.

The big problem here is that the Java applet that I have to write by tomorrow and am sure I won't be able to get done is worth 20% of my mark in the course. So if I don't get it done, my mark is out of 80. Oh, did I mention that to pass, I need a 65? So that would mean I would need an 81% in the rest of the course just to pass. Fortunately, I think I can say for sure that I have at least that mark. I got the only perfect score on the first exam in the course, and I think I've done pretty well on everything else too. So maybe I'd get a 70 in the course. It's a pass, but by grad school standards it's an extremely shitty mark. Heck, by my standards it's an extremely shitty mark, even though I've gone below that on occasion in the past.

The thing is, even if I got an extension, I don't think I'd ever get it done. Maybe I'm just freaking out right now, but it seems like learning how to write this Java applet is an insurmountable peak that I have no desire to climb. Programming stuff like that is just not my cup of tea.

In fact I'm coming to that conclusion about grad school in general. I just can't hack it. Not because it's too hard, but because I'm just not motivated to do it. A graduate degree is all about self-motivation, and I'm just not self-motivated when it comes to what I'm studying. I've had a month to do this project, and I've done nothing. Is the same thing going to happen with my thesis? Am I going to get to the end of my degree and go "oh shit, I probably shouldn't have left this until the night before?"

Basically it comes back to the question of "What the hell am I doing here?" I look at the path that led me to where I am today, and I can't believe that I followed it. I'm interested in some of the stuff that I'm doing right now, but when I think about doing this for the rest of my life, it holds terrifyingly little appeal.

The Gold Standard

Okay, I know that the gold standard hasn't been used for years, but there's no denying the fact that the price of gold is at a 22-year high. It's one of those things that makes you think that all economists are definitely nuts. Well, sort of. Individually, they're not, because some people have been making a lot of money on surging gold prices, no doubt. But collectively, it's nuts that gold is such a valued resource.

Gold has some interesting physical properties. It's a pretty colour. It's highly unreactive. It can be hammered thinner than any other metal while still retaining its structure. It's very conductive and very heavy. These are cool properties, but they're not very useful in large-scale applications. Indeed, in almost any utilitarian application of gold, the amount of gold used is miniscule. This isn't like aluminum or steel. Heck, this isn't even like platinum or palladium, which are at least used in relatively large quantities as chemical catalysts. No, from a functional perspective, gold is virtually worthless. Sure, a lot of people like gold jewelery, but I guarantee that they wouldn't if gold was worth $500 a ton instead of $500 an ounce. The sole function of most gold that's been dug out of the ground is to hang around and store wealth.

And it's not like it's easy to dig the stuff up in the first place. I'm sure once upon a time there were relatively easily accessible sources of gold around, but those days are over. in the 21^st century, gold mining involves lots of nasty toxic chemicals and environmental damage. Why do we go to such lengths to dig it out of the ground? Obviously, because it's worth $500 an ounce. Why is it worth $500 an ounce? The best reason I can come up with is "because it's so hard to dig out of the ground."

It makes sense for somebody like the U.S. government to a strategic oil supply. But why do they have a strategic gold supply? Why is a country with $8 trillion of debt hanging on to approximately $75 billion of gold? This reminds me of two things. One is, it reminds me of the ancient Persian empire, where the emperor also held large reserves of gold. When the Greeks conquered Persia, they liberated all that gold into the economy and brought about an economic boom throughout the region. Obviously the situation is a bit different here, since gold is no longer used as currency. The other thing it reminds me of is Thomas Moore's Utopia, where the Utopians laugh at foreigners who value gold and jewels.

What's my point? I don't know if I have one. Let's just say I'm not going to be buying gold any time soon. Do I think that the U.S. treasury should sell of all its gold? It's an interesting question: what would happen if you were to flood the market like that? Obviously the price of gold would tank, but what would be the long-term effects? I'm just an armchair economist, but I think it's hard to predict. At the very least though, it would shut down the completely pointless gold mining industry forever.

How about this for a thought though: instead setting currency values to a gold standard like they used to do, why not use an oil standard? Then when you drive, you are literally burning money.

Canada's problems

Is it just me, or are most of Canada's problems the result of trying to make special arrangements for oppressed minorities? I've been living in Quebec for three months now, and all you ever hear about in Quebec politics is sovereignty-this and seperatism-that. I don't get it. If Quebec wants independence from Canada, it's already most of the way there. The Canadian Federation already gives its provinces more freedom to set their own policies than any other such system in the world. Quebec has special priveleges beyond this: it has its own completely separate legal system, it's recognized as a distinct society, etc. etc. Meanwhile the Anglophone minority is treated like second class citizens. Believe me, if the situation were reversed and there were as many Francophones in Ontario as there are Anglophones in Quebec, no one would be preventing store owners from having their signs in French! I think we'd be much better off if we had a stronger federal constitution that did away with such nonsense. Sure, it might piss off some whiny Francophones in the short term, but I think it would create a more just, equitable and stable society for all Canadians in the long-term.

To be fair, if I were a Francophone Quebecois, I'm pretty sure I'd be all about defending Quebec's culture, so I'd be a hypocrite to complain. But please at least get over yourselves!

The second major case of this is the First Nations. It's a tragedy that the First Nations were not invited to be equal partners with European settlers right from the beginning, rather than treating them as the enemy who occupied territory that we wanted. Failing that, there were many opportunities to integrate the natives with European Canadians/Americans throughout history. But we messed it up. For example, the Innu in Labrador: they used to live quite happily as hunter/gatherers. They live where no one else lives. But we had to go and try and "civilize" them by making them settle down, thus creating a culture of welfare dependence. They can't go back to being hunter/gatherers now, now can they? Not since their hunter/gatherer culture has been replaced by a drinker/gas-huffer. We should have just let them be. Those that wanted to carry on their ancestral ways could have; the rest could have moved to Toronto.

Of course now Paul Martin wants to "solve" the problem in the conventional European way: by throwing money at it to the tune of $4 billion on top of the countless billions that have already been handed out in welfare to natives who would have been better off if they'd never heard of Paul Martin. I secretly wonder if it's actually just a joke, and that Paul Martin knows that he can say whatever the hell he wants, since the government is going to be overthrown on Monday, he's going to lose the election, and Stephen Harper is going to overturn anything he does now.

So what is the solution to these problems? Beats me. The Quebec one is a realy Deusy. I think maybe you'd have to totally rewrite the constitution. The constitution is pretty messed up anyway, because the division of powers between the provinces and the federal government is completely illogical and totally backwards in many cases.

As for the First Nations? I'd say cut them loose. Maybe do it slowly, but cut them loose. Yeah, it would be bad. But in the long term, it would work. Do we still want to have natives living on welfare institutionally in 100 years time? I don't, but that's what's going to happen if we stick on the same course we're on. Would we destroy First Nations culture? Maybe. But is there a lot left of it that's worth saving anyway? Most native languages, religions and traditions have disappeared or been amalgamated beyond recognition, and now the unfortunate dominant trends in native culture are suicide, drug and alcohol abuse, and chronic welfare dependency.

Beef-eating vampire drug addicts march for human rights

Some days I just get off on taking something that someone else has written and tearing it to bits over the utter idiocy of it. Here goes:

There was an editorial in the McGill Daily today criticizing Hema Quebec for not accepting blood donations from gay men. He starts out by arguing not that gay men, prostitutes and ex-cons are not more likely to have HIV than others, but that it's the government's fault that gay men, prostitutes and ex-cons are more likely to have HIV than others. This is utterly moronic. But it gets better. Next he poses the following hypothetical:

"Let’s imagine for a moment a world where the stats showed that heterosexuals had the highest rate of HIV. Would there be a blanket ban on straights all of a sudden? I doubt it."

No shit. If 95% of people were more likely to have HIV than the other 5%, then those 95% would still have to be allowed to donate blood, otherwise there would not be enough blood to go around. Consider a more numerically comperable hypothetical: what if it was shown that, say, red haired people were more likely to have HIV for some reason. Would they be barred from donating blood? Damn right! This isn't discrimination, this is common sense.

If you're going to argue that the blood donation policy should be changed, fine. Show some scientific evidence that we're better off changing them, to allow or disallow some group to donate. But this is not a human rights issue! The right to donate blood does not exist, and shouldn't.

I just hope they never start accepting blood from heroin-addicted gay vampire hookers who eat British beef off the bone.

Blitzkreig to begin shortly

I think it's great when women make inroads into the traditionally male-dominated field of politics, which is why it makes me happy to see that Germany has elected its first female chancellor. But I find it a little bit worrying that she belongs to a party with the word "Christian" in its name. I also find it worrying that her profile describes her as "a little bit Margaret Thatcher and a little bit Tony Blair". So the German troops will be moving into Iraq when exactly?

Also, I've mentioned Peak Oil a few times on this blog. A lot of sites about Peak Oil portray extremely paranoid, doom-and-gloom scenarios, sometimes based on selective evidence and far-right political leanings. I'm not a big fan of this take. Sure, Peak Oil is something that is dangerous to ignore and will undoubtebly have far-reaching consequences, but I don't think it's likely to result in a massive dieoff and the end of industrial civilization. This is why I was glad to find this site today. Despite the title "Peak Oil Debunked," it's not claiming that Peak Oil isn't going to happen, just that there is a lot we can do about it.

Also, snowfall #4 is going on outside, and there's still another week left in November. And why does it always snow on days when I have DSP?

It's that time of year again: Crisis Time

After an entire day yesterday struggling to solve Poisson equations using the 2-dimensional cosine transform for my image processing final project, and not having much luck with it, I'm feeling pretty fed up of engineering.

Around this same time last year, I felt the same way. After my Control Systems midterm, I was on the verge of quitting engineering completely. I was quoted as saying things like "If I thought the rest of my life were going to be like this, I'd kill myself now." In hindsight, I'm glad I didn't do either of those things; but I'm wishing I'd listened to myself a bit more. This is, in fact, at least the third if not the fourth year in a row when I've felt this way to some degree, like I'm doing the wrong thing with my life, and you'd think I'd have paid attention to the trend by now.

Don't get me wrong; the stuff I'm learning now is a lot more interesting than the stuff I was learning in engineering physics. I no longer have to sit in class and listen to some prof prattle on about something I just don't give a shit about (well, except in my digital signal processing class, but that seems to be the exception rather than the rule). But the fact that I enjoy the material more is more than offset by the fact that my social support structure in Montreal is greatly diminished compared to what it was in Kingston; all my closest friends have gone their separate ways and it's proving harder than I expected to establish a new social group here.

As always, I'm having a hard time getting motivated. I think I'm a very difficult person to motivate. If you try and motivate me with punishment, I will resent you; if you try and motivate me with reward, I simply won't appreciate it. The school system at all levels institutionalizes these two schemes of motivation into the grading system. I think I'm more motivated by two other factors: compassion and fun. Compassion is about doing something good for someone else; unfortunately, it is difficult for me to see any direct, concrete good that can come out of my current field of study.

I'm more motivated by the fun factor though. It's difficult to define, because it's different for everyone. I'm sure some people in engineering find it fun; even I find some parts of it fun. But generally it's not what I'm interested in. If I look at most of my professors, or my dad (who is a PhD researcher in the private sector), I see people who obviously love what they are doing, and are committed to it. They go home from work at night and they think about work, because that's what interests them. (Heck, my dad even voluntarily works weekends because it's a time for him to do work without having to deal with the everyday nonsense of reading email and answering the phone--he's your typical mad scientist, really.) On the other hand, I go home at night and do my best to totally avoid thinking about my school work--which probably explains why I still have so much work left to do in the last two weeks of class and why I'm writing this diatribe right now instead of getting on with it.

And the bad thing about school is, it's not like a job where you can just go home at 5 o'clock and forget about work until the next morning. You're stuck with it 24-7. There's no fixed schedule--heck, there's no fixed amount of work you have to do! You're expected to do the best you can at everything. If it's what you love doing, that's fine; but if you're like me and you really don't enjoy it, it royally sucks. And the fact is that being a professor is no different. You can never leave work at work. This is why professors love what they do: because if they didn't, they'd work in the private sector, where they don't have to worry about it all the time. It's also why my dad would have made a really great professor. And why I definitely don't want to be one, at least not in my current field.

No, the things I'm interested in are of a different nature. Sure, I'm interested in technology, but I'm interested in how it changes society, rather than in how it works. I read a lot, but it's not about image processing or quantum mechanics; I read about history, economics, politics. I read about how individuals interact with society. That's what I'm interested in. Which leads me to my next conclusion: I want to go to law school.

Although I should perhaps append that with an "I think." My family is a science family, and "lawyer" was something of a bad word in my house growing up. To be honest, I still don't like what lawyers do, for the most part, but I think that's more because of the types of people who are attracted to being lawyers than anything. Maybe I have a romanticized view of what it's like to be a lawyer, and that if I became a lawyer, I'd go full circle and start reading books about physics in order to escape from my boring life as a lawyer. Maybe I'll never be happy with anything I do.

I've also thought about dropping out of the system completely. I honestly believe that industrial society is, to a large extent, a sinking ship and I'm probably a fool for not getting off. I should go and buy a piece of land somewhere and become an organic farmer. Just go totally Amish. Unfortunately, even if I really wanted to do that, I can't. First of all, I don't have money to buy land. Second, I don't know the first thing about farming. Third, it would mean throwing away everything I hold dear. So maybe that's not a good idea. Maybe I'm better off trying to bring the system down lightly from the inside. A Master's degree in electrical engineering with a focus on computer vision will definitely not help me to do this. A law degree might though.

So, okay, I've learned one important thing from my Master's so far: I don't want to do a PhD. I have no interest in being an academic scientist. The question remains: what do I want to do with my life? It's funny, I don't feel like I have many good options. It seems like most things, I either have no interest in doing, or I needed to get on board a long time ago (like if I wanted to be a professional musician, for example, I would have had to have been practising since I was a kid, and it's too late now). The lawyer idea is a good one, because it's pretty surefire. But the thing I really want to do with myself? Risky business.

I always forget that when I went into engineering, I never wanted to be an engineer. What I've wanted to do, from a very early age, was to be a novelist. Yes, I know, the first criterion to being a novelist is to have written a novel, which I haven't done. But that's because in my naive attempt to hedge my bets against the possibility that I might never become a successful novelist, I went down a path that basically sucks up all the time I could be spending researching and writing a novel. But one day I'll do it, maybe. A plot is starting to form in my mind these days, and soon maybe I'll start writing it. Of course, since going to university and realizing that the world is a big place full of smart people, my chances of becoming a successful novelist look a lot more grim than they did when I was in high school. Back then, the teachers were justified in telling me how exceptionally talented I was as a writer, compared to everyone else. Now, five years later, I've barely written a thing other than a lot of lab reports and this blog in the last five years, while all the other talented writers I've met have been taking courses that actually gave them room to use those talents. Nonetheless, if everyone took that view, no one would ever succeed in anything. I might still have a shot, but also I still need to hedge my bets.

So this leaves me with a the following course of action:

• start writing something.
• do one of the following:

1. Finish my Master's, then get a job for a bit while I think about what I really want to do.
2. Finish my Master's, then go to law school.
3. Withdraw from my Master's at the end of the year and go to law school in September.
   

The last one is pretty bad form, and I'm not sure how easy it is to pull off, but it's looking more and more like it might be the way to go. I hate to be a quitter, but sometimes you're better off cutting your losses. I think maybe I'll take the LSAT in the spring just to keep my options open. (I am, of course, assuming I'll do okay on the LSAT--I think I will, but if I don't, that will require me to rethink the whole plan.)

Still kickin'

I'm not dead or anything, I just haven't been blogging for a while because I've been really busy, mostly with school. November is the month when projects, presentations, and exams all come together and kick you in the ass. Having three major projects due in the first two days of December is no fun at all, especially when you've been neglecting them for all of October and letting yourself get behind, like I've done. But this is the way it's always been. Luckily I've been through worse back at Queen's. It'll all be over in less than three weeks (except for my one true final exam in mid-December).

Two weekends ago I was back in Kingston to attend Sci Formal, Queen's annual formal for fourth-year engineering students, with my girlfriend. It was a great time. Ironically, it was my first time going, because the aforementioned engineering physics workload dissuaded me from going last year, given that every attendee is expected to put in 45 hours of work to transform Grant Hall into an alternate universe (this year's alternate universe: New York City). It's interesting to note the approximate labour cost of the event:

(400 fourth year engineering students) × (45 hours each) × ($25 an hour they could be making soon after graduation) = $450,000

It makes you wonder.

I know that some readers of my blog have complained that I talk about the weather too much on here, but what can I say? That's what Canadians talk about. Today brings the second significant snowfall to Montreal, and the first to actually settle on the ground. Despite my post a while ago about feeling like I'm an adult, I still giggle like a schoolgirl the first few times it snows.

Anyway, I have an exam tomorrow, so I should get back to the grind. Cheers, blogosphere! Posting will be more frequent once December rolls around.

Funny Stuff

They recently found a Burmese python in the Everglades that had tried to swallow a six-foot-long alligator whole. Big surprise, the python died when the alligator tried to claw its way out.

I'm currently listening to A Twist of Marley: A Jazz Tribute to Bob Marley. When I saw it, I had to download it. But it turns out to be as bad as you'd think. I might like Bob Marley and I might like jazz, but...I also like ice cream and cheese, but that's not to say I'd want to mix them.

More in the "not funny like ha ha but funny like a smell" vein of funniness, apparently the other day all of New York City smelled of apple pie. The funny thing is, no one knows why. Conspiracy theories abound though, if you look around the internet a bit.