Green Oasis

The Second Book of Go by Richard Bozulich provides a comprehensive survey of the basic concepts of go for the advanced beginner: openings, handicap strategy, josekis, attacking, tesuji, life and death, capturing races, good shape, endgame, and ko fighting. The book covered these topics in greatly varying lengths. It treats capturing races in two chapters—probably exhausting the subject—while ko fighting only gets five pages. I had trouble following some of the examples; I think the author expected more expertise from the reader and therefore left much unsaid. I enjoyed that many of the chapters suggest books for further study, a welcome guide to the bewildering number of available go books.

Despite its title, I found it an excellent third book, and it definitely required more than a simple knowledge of the rules, despite its subtitle. I’ll be digesting the contents of this book for quite a while.

I had an amusing thought while sitting in church last Sunday. If the trinitarian view of the Godhead were correct and Jesus was God, then perhaps Jesus’ crucifixion was God’s way of saying “You know what? I fucked up. All this cruelty and suffering is all my fault, and now it’s time for me to pay for my crimes.”

It makes perfect sense to me, and it would make an omnipotent God seem like less of a jerk.

Bruce Schneier, renowned security pundit, wrote in his latest Cryptogram newsletter that the dichotomy between security and privacy is false: increased security doesn’t necessarily a decrease in privacy like some inversely proportional law of nature.

We’ve been told we have to trade off security and privacy so often—in debates on security versus privacy, writing contests, polls, reasoned essays and political rhetoric—that most of us don’t even question the fundamental dichotomy.

But it’s a false one.

Security and privacy are not opposite ends of a seesaw; you don’t have to accept less of one to get more of the other. Think of a door lock, a burglar alarm and a tall fence. Think of guns, anti-counterfeiting measures on currency and that dumb liquid ban at airports. Security affects privacy only when it’s based on identity, and there are limitations to that sort of approach.

Since 9/11, approximately three things have potentially improved airline security: reinforcing the cockpit doors, passengers realizing they have to fight back, and—possibly—sky marshals. Everything else—all the security measures that affect privacy—is just security theater and a waste of effort.

By the same token, many of the anti-privacy “security” measures we’re seeing—national ID cards, warrantless eavesdropping, massive data mining, and so on—do little to improve, and in some cases harm, security. And government claims of their success are either wrong, or against fake threats.

The debate isn’t security versus privacy. It’s liberty versus control.

So don’t let a politician sandbag you into giving up privacy for promises of greater security.

Kids these days with their new-fangled lingo!

I just learned what FTW means. I always assumed that it was the reverse of WTF. I was slightly perplexed why it wasn’t punctuated with a question mark to express “You want me to put my what where?!” Now that I know the truth, those previous conversations make slightly more sense.