Golden Rule of Authoring

Here's an exerpt from Moshe Vardi's editorial in the July 2010 issue of CACM:

... we are the authors and we are the reviewers. It is not "them reviewers;" it is "us reviewers." Hillel the Elder, a Jewish scholar, 30 B.C.-10 A.D., said "What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow." This is known as the Silver Rule in moral philosophy. The Golden Rule, which strengthens the Silver Rule, asserts "do unto others as you would have them do to you." Allow me to rephrase this as the Golden Rule of Reviewing: "Write a review as if you are writing it to yourself." This does not mean that we should not write critical reviews! But the reviews we write must be fair, weighing both strengths and weaknesses; they must be constructive, suggesting how the weaknesses can be addressed; and, above all, they must be respectful. After all, these are the reviews that we would like to receive!

I'm inspired by this. So inspired that I decided to hazard a conjecture for the Golden Rule of Authoring: "Write a paper as if you are writing your last paper and you would like it to be your best paper, ever." A conjecture that by no means should be a surprising one.

Idea's share

An excerpt from John Regehr's blog:

I'm arguing that the “generating ideas” part of research is over-rated. The important thing is to have just enough good ideas — one of my colleagues likes to say you only need a good idea about every two years — and then to build a competent research program based on those ideas.

Emphasis added by me.

Let Them Alone

If God has been good enough to give you a poet
Then listen to him. But for God's sake let him alone until he is dead;
no prizes, no ceremony,
They kill the man. A poet is one who listens
To nature and his own heart; and if the noise of the world grows up
around him, and if he is tough enough,
He can shake off his enemies, but not his friends.
That is what withered Wordsworth and muffled Tennyson, and would have
killed Keats; that is what makes
Hemingway play the fool and Faulkner forget his art.

-- Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962)

Came across the above thanks to this essay by Oded Goldreich.

Two personalities

Stamps on a letter received from home:

Mother Teresa and Indira Gandhi, two of India's highest civilian awardees, in their personalities, had much in contrast and, arguably, much in common too. It's just as well that they find themselves next to each other, stamped together, on a random post.

Suum cuique

An excerpt from a German visa application related document:

To each his own, isn't it?

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

--- William Ernest Henley, 1875

An over-arching vision

Barry Mazur in his remembrance of Serge Lang mentions:

With my highlighting, I wonder how Mazur would've rendered Lang's vision had he been less charitable and chosen to put it just technically, in all its glory.

Time and chance

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill, but time and chance happeneth to them all.

-- Ecclesiastes

An act of integrity and grace

Bertrand Russell on Gottlob Frege's response to his letter:

As I think about acts of integrity and grace, I realise there is nothing in my knowledge to compare with Frege's dedication to truth. His entire life's work was on the verge of completion, much of his work had been ignored to the benefit of men infinitely less capable, his second volume was about to be published, and upon finding that his fundamental assumption was in error, he responded with intellectual pleasure clearly submerging any feelings of personal disappointment. It was almost superhuman and a telling indication of that of which men are capable if their dedication is to creative work and knowledge instead of cruder efforts to dominate and be known.

Zaltzmanesque

With his hilarious take on all things cricket, Andy Zaltzman has ensured a permanent place in the all time hall of fame for cricket satire and statistrivia. Here are some samples at random from his blog:

On umpires checking daylight and ball shape ---

No slower human movement has ever been officially recorded than that of two umpires sludging towards each other to confer over the light, like a pair of amorous teenage tortoises unsure of whether to make the first move, or two unhappy commuters trying to miss the same train.

This is sometimes equalled by the funereal dawdle to co-examine the roundness of an allegedly-misshapen ball, as if this responsibility is a holy, god-given ritual as old as time itself, and the ball is a precious relic whose molecules must not be woken.

On how I too can remember my marriage anniversary ---

Following a brief and tetchy consultation with Mrs Confectionery Stall, I can now confirm that my anniversary is 18th September. I will never forget it again – the figures in the date 18-9 make up the number of Test wickets taken by SF Barnes, Erapalli Prasanna or (for at least another week) Zaheer Khan, or, as an emergency fall-back memory-jogging stat, the highest Test score of Jacques Kallis, Vijay Manjrekar, Bruce Mitchell and four others, or, in extremis, the number of runs conceded by underrated Pakistani tweaker Tauseef Ahmed whilst taking three Indian wickets in the first innings of the first Test at Chennai in 1987.

If I ever move to America, my revised anniversary of 9-18 would be simply recalled by remembering the number of Test runs scored by 1960s England offspinner David Allen, or the number of balls faced by David Gower in the 1983-84 Pakistan v England series.

Alternatively, if I merely wish to avoid confusion and remember the 9 and 18 sections of the anniversary date independently to ensure the great day is not forgotten regardless of geographical location, I need only remind myself of the number of Test centuries scored by Maurice Leyland and the number of five-wicket hauls taken by Lance Gibbs, and then deduce which number refers to the day and which to the month by analysing which one is greater than 12. My marriage is now safe. Thank you Statsguru. I owe you my future happiness.

On Duckwork-Lewis method ---

The Duckworth-Lewis method is rightly regarded as one of humankind’s greatest scientific breakthroughs, fit to set alongside Archimedes hopping into his bath and splashing water all over his new carpet, Fleming not bothering to wash up his petri-dishes, and whoever first discovered the sliceability of bread.

Before Professors D and L intervened, the received wisdom of the ages had been that the intervention of rain or bad light would forever skew the natural axis of limited-over cricketing justice. Previous attempts to solve this ageless conundrum had ranged from incomplete to idiotic. However, after years of secretive testing of their formula on teams of cricket-playing laboratory mice dressed in garish little pyjamas, Duckworth and Lewis unleashed their ingenious system on the cricket world and instantly catapulted themselves onto the Nobel Prize waiting list. Many still do not understand the method, but it is one of those things that the public needs to trust rather than comprehend. Like air travel, the workings of the digestive system...and Tony Blair.

Gifts versus weaknesses

An excerpt from Saul Bellow's book Humboldt's Gift (a roman à clé):

Some people embrace their gifts with gratitude. Others have no use for them and can think only of overcoming their weaknesses. Only their defects interest and challenge them. Thus those who hate people may seek them out. Misanthropes often practice psychiatry. The shy become performers. Natural thieves look for positions of trust. The frightened make bold moves.

Bellow seldom leaves any sermon without giving it a touch of humour, even if a self-deprecating one. So, here's how he finishes the above lines:

Or take myself, a lover of beauty who insisted on living in Chicago.

Hardness of security and safety

Eugene H. Spafford is quoted to have said:

The only truly secure system is one that is powered off, cast in a block of concrete and sealed in a lead-lined room with armed guards - and even then I have my doubts.

I guess the quote could just as well have been about safety:

The only truly safe system is one that is powered off, cast in a block of concrete and sealed in a lead-lined room with armed guards - and even then I have my doubts.

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