My fonts have turned up in the strangest places. Rosa’s Lounge still uses the ‘Daniel’ typeface. If you click the link, you can see their ‘Tribute to Sunnyland’ poster on the door — that’s my handwriting. They even used it on their very fine t-shirts. Once in Barcelona I saw a guy wearing the Rosa’s t-shirt coming off the subway. I wanted to say, “Hey! That’s my handwriting!” but how do you say ‘handwriting’ in Spanish? Or should I try Catalan? I don’t even speak freaking Catalan. And what would you say if someone accosted you on the subway, pointing at your shirt and babbling incomprehensible gibberish?

Me: That is my sign.
Him: What?
Me: Sign! Pencil! I did that!
Him: You want my shirt?
Me: No! I wrote on your shirt! Writing! It is a club of music in Chicago!
Him: Are you okay?
Me: Oogy! Oogy boogy! BOOOOOO-GYYYYYYY!

It was the conversation I was destined to have. But indecision held me for that one fateful moment, he and the shirt were gone, and I was another stranger in the Barcelona subway forever doomed to be misunderstood.

Now in this morning’s paper, I see that the West Australian Nursing Agency has used the very clean and sober ‘Perspective Sans’ typeface. I created it when I was young and foolish, and didn’t know my german-double-s from a hole in the ground. I’m pleased to say that I included all the accented characters, though, as well as a very fine Euro, and all in three weights with an italic companion.

While the WANA may lack the cultural cachet of Chicago’s Friendliest Blues Lounge (don’t we all?), nurses are generally solid citizens, important to the community, and have — dare I say — a certain clinical allure. You may join them in the celebration of fine typography by downloading Perspective Sans from dafont.com.

The new Bloomberg/LA Times poll asks the musical question:

“Just thinking about a candidate’s religion, do you think you could vote for [see below] for president, or not?”

And the numbers:

Interesting thing #1: I’m just dying to know the number for ‘atheist’, but they didn’t seem to ask. My bet: just below ‘Muslim’.
Interesting thing #2: That Evangelical Christian number is scarily high.
Interesting thing #3: Mormons have terrible numbers.

It’s not fair. Mormons have tried and tried to be just like Evangelical Christians. They retooled the ‘curse of Ham‘ argument that Southern Baptist preachers used to justify slavery as a justification for not giving Black men the priesthood. They’ve turned up the ‘Jesus’ talk and the ‘saved by grace’ talk and dialed down the ‘works’ thing. Despite the failure of the U.S. Government to protect members back in the 1840’s, they’re the most reliably, flag-wavingly, unquestioningly pro-American group around. They’ve gone right-wing on issue after issue from abortion to gay marriage, and it still earns them no love among the Evangelicals or the people who vote for them.

Of course, this is all about Romney. Mitt Romney would be a great Republican candidate, by which I mean he’d be just as Neanderthal as Bush on issues, but not as big an idiot. The guy’s squeaky clean, no divorces, no scandal (let’s say), and he fits right in with Republicans on issues they care about. But for some reason, the Mormon thing is a deal-breaker. Why is it so?

Some Romney fans are saying a lot of the number is coming from Democrats who wouldn’t vote for a (presumably conservative) Mormon. That doesn’t wash. Many Democrats wouldn’t vote for an Evangelical Christian either, but their numbers are doing fine. Why the disparity?

Let’s head to townhall.com (1|2) and have a look at the comments. Be strong.

One may as well vote for an Islamist as vote for a Mormon male. They have the same basic philosophy.

But can a Muslim become president ??

For all those folks professing such strong spirits of “tolerance” and “inclusiveness”, how would you feel about a Muslim president ??

The trouble with Ms. Lopez’s argument that evangelicals would gladly vote for Mitt Romney is the fact that Mormons are not anymore Christian than Muslims.

Mormons, JW’s, and Other Cultists

Please don’t join a cult and then run for President thinking that your radical enjoyment of your first amendment privilege isn’t going to come back to haunt you.

Mormons who want to argue that their religion isn’t a cult now are missing the entire point. Perception is reality in politics, and America is not about to be made a laughing stock via our president’s cultish beliefs. A Mormon president is an oxymoron in the USA, it’s never going to happen this side of the 21st century.

Don’t be surprised when the votes start coming in that Romney doesn’t do all that well. It’s one thing to say that his religious veiws don’t matter, it’s entirely differant when you’re alone in a voting booth. That’s when you have decide if you really want to cast your vote for someone that acually believes in something as ludicrous as Mormonism.

I don’t intend to tar conservatives with these comments; I wouldn’t want to characterise liberals by the worst comments on DailyKos. Also, other commenters are vigorously defending the LDS Church and freedom of religion in general. Well and good. But what we see in these comments are a set of ideas about Latter-day Saints that do exist among a portion of the conservative electorate, and which are frequently repeated. Evangelical Christians hate the LDS Church with a fervour that is tangible. Mormons are right down there with Scientologists in their book. They’d stay home rather than vote for one.

In the last 20 years, the Republican party has decided to court the Evangelical vote, a goodly portion of which are the most frighteningly ignorant and bigoted mouthbreathers that have ever lived in the United States. Having tied their fortunes to these voters, the Republicans cannot now easily extricate themselves from them or refrain from catering to their beliefs. The irony (as Amy Sullivan has pointed out) is that now this strategy may block a quite suitable Christian from the Republican nomination.

Pink Panther Theme by Henry Mancini Album: The Collection
Where’d this one come from? My parents’ collection? Oh, yeah, it did. I remember it on the old Maganvox, way back when. It could have been worse. The Refresh button could have picked ‘Baby Elephant Walk’, and then where would we be? So, the Pink Panther it is. Try not to let it make you think of the damn cartoons for just a minute, will ya? Use beginner mind.

That familiar saxophone/flute line suggests feline grace, but there are also some hot drum moves and outrageous horn stings. The way the strings hover over the middle saxophone solo just oozes sophistication.

I think this ranks as Mancini’s finest composition, with the possible exception of Moon River and the theme from ‘Newhart’. The 80’s one, not the 70’s one. Although that was pretty sassy too.

Cul De Sac by Lush Album: Topolino
Check it out; now even Lush has gotten into a jazzy mood. Must be that Pink Panther influence.

I didn’t understand Lush at first. Sure, I bought Gala and Spooky, and I thought ‘nice ethereal vocals’ like everyone else did. But then I saw them live, and there was Miki with the bright red hair, and I thought, ‘Hello, what’s this’?. Then they tore the place apart with ‘Deluxe’, and I reached enlightenment. I still remember standing right in front of Phil on bass, with his incredibly interesting shoes — at least they must have been. The shoes that named a genre.

This track was written by said bass player Phil, and it shows. It’s got a walking bass line, but also vibraphones and sax. I dedicate it to Mancini, who would have been proud.

The Polonaise by Frédéric Chopin Album: Shine (Soundtrack)
A snippet from the ‘Shine’ soundtrack. Chopin was a legend. He died at my age. They all died early. Do you ever wish you could give some of your life to these composers? Because you’re not really doing anything with it, and they could use some extra time. I’d personally give a month out of my life so Mozart could finish his Requiem, even though everyone likes it fine just as it is.

Better to listen to the full version of this song; this version is so short that it’s time to move on to…

Like Dust (Extended) by Passion Puppets Album: Like Dust (Single)
You want to talk 80s. Here’s a band you probably missed. Their debut effort was Beyond the Pale, and the track that got all the airplay on college stations was ‘Like Dust’. The opening bars have a guitar rhythm that sounds like a gallop, and makes the song faintly western. The whole album was a really fine effort, so passionate and heartfelt, and it’s too bad they only ever had the one album. If you see it in some old record store and you still sort of like Modern English or The Icicle Works, give it a spin.

Carol Masters by Alphaville Album: Afternoons in Utopia
Okay, now it’s going to seem like I only have a few albums and they keep repeating. I do have more than just the eight CDs. And yet I’m not complaining that this one’s come up. Again we see Alphaville in a rather complex song with science fantasy overtones. A gorgeous line: “We shall meet tomorrow night, and I’ll kiss you just as tenderly as Cygnus kissed the deserts.” Is it mythology? Or just magical?

Cool Little Toy of the Day: An applet that solves the Traveling Salesman Problem.

The TSP is a classic in AI. You’re a salesman that has to find the shortest path to visit each city in an area. (Apparently you’re allowed to cut across fields in this implementation.)

This approach uses a genetic algorithm, where ‘agents’ try finding a path, and the most successful agents spawn ‘children’ that do the same job but just a little different from the parent.

Give them 300 cities and watch as generation after generation struggles to optimise!

Genetic algorithms are a great model of evolution in action. When I programmed an evolutionary system for a dialogue agent, the most interesting part was evolutionary convergence: how the successful organisms in a population converged on an optimal answer, and thus resembled each other.

Compare it to this description:

There is a certain species of aquatic snail that has to put up with a parasite that bores into its shell and can kill it. So should the snail grow a thicker shell, to reduce the risk of being parasitised? Not necessarily, because being heavier means it’s more difficult to escape predators. So should the snail grow a thinner shell? Maybe, but that means it’s more exposed to the risk of being smashed against a rock and killed by a wave. So a thicker shell is in order? Well yes, unless this reduces its fertility by diverting calcium from its reproductive organs. If we sat down and tried to work out the optimum shell thickness, we would find it nightmarishly difficult. However, natural selection just does it all automatically: a snail with a shell of thickness X will be exposed to certain dangers during its lifetime, and will run a certain risk of dying. No matter how complicated the risks, there will likely be a single optimum shell thickness, and natural selection will home the snail in on this.

That’s it. Just pump out a population of individuals and let natural selection converge. Perhaps a tad wasteful, but very effective.

There are implications for belief systems as well. Many religions were created in the fertile 1800s, and most of them have broken up. Those that have survived are the ones that have made all the right moves. And successful religions resemble each other; that’s why all religions say things like ‘Be good to people’ and ‘Don’t kill or steal.’ These belief systems, by appearing in a population and being modified gradually, have converged upon a moral system that is more or less optimal for humans in a world such as ours. They represent thousands of years of human experience. If there’s a reason to respect religious beliefs, this is it.

This genetic algorithm thing can really change the way you see your life and other people. We’re all evolutionary agents in the world. How are you doing?

I’ve always enjoyed optical illusions. That and magic — maybe I secretly like being tricked.

Here’s my favourite optical illusion at the moment.

You see before you a chessboard, with a cylinder casting a shadow upon it.

There is a square marked ‘A’ and a square marked ‘B’. Believe it or not, squares A and B are the exact same shade of grey. Don’t believe it? Fine, be that way. Proof is offered at the artist’s page, along with some other great illusions in Flash.

Don’t blame your brain for leading you astray. It’s doing a fine job. Our brains aren’t designed to show us things as they are. They’re pattern extractors. They combine the data we get into meaningful patterns that help us group those nearby random shapes into the image of an oncoming truck — thereby ensuring our survival.

In language, that means a child can extract the syntatcic patterns from grown-up speech and ingore all the ‘ums’ and ‘uhs’ that aren’t all that important. It also allowed you to read right through those two spelling mistakes I made in the last sentence. You knew what I meant.

Unfortunately, these little funny bits in our reasoning mean that it’s hard for us to learn things like statistics and logic — it’s not intuitive. We also get swayed by fallacies. Fortunately we can learn these things with a bit of effort.