Haskell Team Up

I suggested a team-up, and, lo, it appears!

Lambdaman meets Spider-Moy

I was delighted and gobsmacked to hear from Moises Vazquez, a university teacher from Mexico who has a penchant for dressing up as Spider-Man. Reuters reports:

"I do the same job as anyone else, I don't think it's the best class in the world just because I put on a suit. But I assure you I want to be the most honest and dedicated there is, I just want to make the classroom a better place," he said.

I am blown away by his costume, with amazing detail such as Barendregt's lambda cube on the back and categorical arrows for webbing. Time for a superhero team-up?

Explained Visually

As the creators put it

Explained Visually (EV) is an experiment in making hard ideas intuitive inspired the work of Bret Victor's Explorable Explanations. Sign up to hear about the latest.

I've found their explanations of Markov Chains and Eigenvectors and Eigenvalues both cool and clear.

Papers We Love: John Reynolds, Definitional Interpreters for Higher-Order Languages, now in Haskell

I suggested at Papers We Love that someone might like to recode John Reynolds's definitional interpeter, and I'm pleased to say that Rein Henrichs has done so.

First Paul, now John

Two years ago we lost Paul Hudak to cancer. Today I was saddened to learn that we have lost his close collaborator, John Peterson, to a climbing accident. Both will be missed.

Option A vs B: Decision Time

Tomorrow Edinburgh City Council will decide between Options A and B for the East-West Cycle route, after deferring a decision last September.  Some of the recent coverage:

• A visualisation of Roseburn Option A (above).
• A comparison of road layout, current against Option A (below).
• A letter in the Edinburgh Evening News from East-West nemesis Pete Gregson.
• A letter from Transport Committee head Leslie Hinds, rebutting the previous letter.
• A two-page spread in the Edinburgh Evening News.
• A blog post from Daisy Narayanan of Sustrans.

Daisy's post hit the mark:

We have seen narratives that create an ‘us’ and ‘them’ – pitting ‘motorists’ against ‘cyclists’ against ‘pedestrians’. With such projects, it is hugely disheartening to see what should have been a force for positive change become a focus for anger. It is equally disheartening to see strong evidence and the policies of the Scottish Government which support a more active, greener Scotland being undermined by such opposition.

In darker moments, I have been tempted to draw parallels to the post-fact world that we seem to inhabit at present.

Previously:
  Option A vs B: Kicked into the long grass

  Option A: Think about the children

  Roseburn to Leith Walk A vs B: time to act!
  Ride the Route in support of Option A

Do you have Q?

A study conducted at Northeastern analyses the factors that contribute to success in science. Age is not one of them.

The research team began by focusing on career physicists. It ransacked the literature going back to 1893, identifying 2,856 physicists with careers of 20 years or more who published at least one paper every five years — widely cited findings rated as “impact” papers — and the team analyzed when in a career those emerged. ...
[K]eeping productivity equal, the scientists were as likely to score a hit at age 50 as at age 25. The distribution was random; choosing the right project to pursue at the right time was a matter of luck.
Yet turning that fortuitous choice into an influential, widely recognized contribution depended on another element, one the researchers called Q.
Q could be translated loosely as “skill,” and most likely includes a broad variety of factors, such as I.Q., drive, motivation, openness to new ideas and an ability to work well with others. Or, simply, an ability to make the most of the work at hand: to find some relevance in a humdrum experiment, and to make an elegant idea glow.
“This Q factor is so interesting because it potentially includes abilities people have but may not recognize as central,” said Zach Hambrick, a professor of psychology at Michigan State University. “Clear writing, for instance. Take the field of mathematical psychology. You may publish an interesting finding, but if the paper is unreadable, as so many are, you can’t have wide impact because no one understands what you’re talking about.”

Benedict Carey, New York Times, When It Comes to Success, Age is Just a Number.

Anti-semitism, conjured and real

Accusations of anti-semitism in the Labour party have gone virtually unchallenged, which is unconscionable because almost all of what is referred to as 'anti-semitism' is simply legitimate protest against Israel's oppression of Palestinians. David Plank at Jews Sans Frontiers has just published a thorough debunking. 

I've been lucky to rarely face anti-semitism in my personal life. So its salutary to be reminded the extent to which it actually exists in the world. If nothing else, this is something that Donald Trump does well.

Trump's campaign is based on dog-whistle racism, including anti-semitism, as called out in An Open Letter to Jared Kushner from one of your Employees and, more humorously, by Jon Stewart in The Day I Woke Up To Find Out Somebody Was Tweeting Weird Shit About Me.

 

Of course, many others than Jews have faced the same racism, as noted in The Price I’ve Paid for Opposing Donald Trump.

The issues at stake have been eloquently stated, more forthrightly than in most media, by Adam Gopnik in A Point of View. I expect most folk reading this will not be supporters of Trump, but, if you are, please listen to it before you vote.

Papers We Love Remote Meetup: John Reynolds, Definitional Interpreters for Higher-Order Languages

I will reprise my June presentation to Papers We Love London at Papers We Love Remote Meetup 2, today at 7pm UK time, with the subject John Reynolds, Definitional Interpreters for Higher-Order Languages. Learn the origins of denotational semantics and continuations. Additional citations here. See you there!

Lambdaman (and Lambdawoman) supporting Bootstrap - Last Three Days!

You have just three more days to order your own Lambdaman or Lambdawoman t-shirt, as featured in the video of Propositions as Types. Now available in unisex, children's, and women's shirts. Profits go to Bootstrap, an organisation run by Shriram Krishnamurthi, Matthias Felleisen, and the PLT group that teaches functional programming to middle and high school students. Order will be printed on October 15.