Disqus - Latest Comments for gknauth

Re: Residents at Harvard-Owned Apartment Complex Resort to ‘Self-Policing’ Amid Increased Theft

Geoff Knauth — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 10:43:49 -0000

You would move packages to inside a locked door for your neighbors, wouldn't you? Or would you be happy to have your packages and your neighbors' packages stolen. This has nothing to do with racism. This is about looking out for your neighbors when the city you live in or campus police say they can't or won't do anything to protect against thefts.

Re: Chocolatey Software | Netcat 1.12

Geoff Knauth — Tue, 28 Mar 2023 09:45:34 -0000

I had exactly the same experience at HeraldSH.

Re: Stop Asking Others What They’re Doing Post-Grad | Opinion | The Harvard Crimson

Geoff Knauth — Sat, 11 Mar 2023 14:01:42 -0000

At my 35th reunion, I asked current seniors what their plans were. I was just curious, nothing more. #1 answer I got was, "I don't know." For a brief moment I thought, "Oh." Then I quickly remembered that when I was a senior, I had no idea what I was going to do next. Same with many of my classmates. It all worked out, for almost all of us. I have no expectation that anyone should or shouldn't be doing anything. Perhaps I have an expectation that whatever our plans, things will change. That turned out to be true for even those of us who had their whole lives mapped out. Now I have my 40th reunion coming up. I genuinely am curious what young people are interested in doing. I'll keep this article in mind.

Re: A Letter to My White Male Friends of a Certain Age - Non Profit News | Nonprofit Quarterly

Geoff Knauth — Fri, 28 Aug 2020 18:43:06 -0000

I appreciate the new perspective of the article. When I reflect on my
pain, it is mostly seeing how impenetrable certain elements are in our
society, how deeply ingrained are the attitudes, especially in the area
where I've lived for the last two decades, in Central PA. After Rayshard
Brooks was fatally shot, in the back, I had a discussion with a young
white teenager or young adult who basically said he would have done the
same thing (shoot someone in the back). He really thought nothing of the
idea that if you flee from a police officer you should be killed. I
said, "Really, you would do that?" He said, "Hell yeah I would." I was
stunned, and still am stunned, even a month later. I was even more
horrified to think that a likely career path for this young man might be
to become a police officer, and I found myself pleading to God, "Please
God don't let this man ever become a police officer, not with the
attitudes he has been brought up to believe." It's a nightmare, a
continuation and worsening of the problem. And that was all before Jacob
Blake was shot in the back, seven times, and paralyzed, and before a
17yo white assassin who loves guns and worships police shot protestors
in cold blood just afterward. I do talk to fellow white people, and most
of them are reasonable and good, most of them understand the work that
has to be done to heal wounds, overcome prejudices, and repair the
damage done over centuries and recently made worse again. But then there
are those conversations I have with some white people who just don't
care, who sneer, who truly believe white people are superior, who would
shoot a black person as quickly as they would shoot a dog (and who
shoots a dog anyway?), and it's like staring evil in the face, and I
wonder, What Next?

Re: Life Got You Down? Time to Read The Master and Margarita

Geoff Knauth — Wed, 17 Oct 2018 09:18:53 -0000

I hope some day there is an audiobook version in Russian. I've read the novel in Russian and in English, but it's something I'd like to listen to in Russian as well. I do have the DVDs of the TV series made in Russia about ten years ago.

Re: Life Got You Down? Time to Read The Master and Margarita

Geoff Knauth — Wed, 17 Oct 2018 09:16:07 -0000

One of my favorite books ever!

Re: Interactive Overlays With the Racket Plot Package

Geoff Knauth — Tue, 13 Feb 2018 15:24:28 -0000

Awesome, thanks!

Re: Vietnam Falls, Harvard Shrugs | Opinion | The Harvard Crimson

Geoff Knauth — Fri, 29 Sep 2017 13:59:11 -0000

I agree 100% with the last sentence.

Re: Vietnam Falls, Harvard Shrugs | Opinion | The Harvard Crimson

Geoff Knauth — Tue, 26 Sep 2017 13:49:44 -0000

Wow, your father was a West Point graduate, had a Ph.D. in English from the University of Pennsylvania, taught English at West Point, and was an Airborne Ranger. That's pretty damned impressive. That section leader was not only wrong to say what he said, but profoundly ignorant as well. I hope he learned his lesson.

Re: Vietnam Falls, Harvard Shrugs | Opinion | The Harvard Crimson

Geoff Knauth — Tue, 26 Sep 2017 13:38:55 -0000

Thank you for sharing your memories. I'd love to know more about your father. Thank you for literally standing up and giving your section leader a clue. Thank you for sharing your life experience with the kitchen staff at Adams House. I had two brothers in Vietnam, both returned safely, so I've heard many stories, but each veteran's experience is always unique, and I have learned a great deal from the Burns/Novick Vietnam series. I send you my heartfelt best wishes. It has taken this country way too long to recognize the sacrifices made by our Vietnam veterans and their families. I will look for your father's name the next time I visit the Wall.

Re: Why do we race 2000m? The history behind the distance.

Geoff Knauth — Thu, 04 May 2017 14:49:36 -0000

Regarding the "brutal five miles" of the earliest CRASH-B races on the Concept II Model A: back then one "mile" on the ergometer's odometer went by in about as much time as 500m did on later ergometer models, so it wasn't as brutal as you might think. Five Model A "miles" was about as brutal as the 2500m CRASH-B races we had for most of the 1980s on later model ergometers. The race was longer than 2k because, well, it was winter, you should train longer distances before you get quicker in the spring. However in the late 1980s and early 1990s the pressure was on for CRASH-B to standardize on 2k so that scores could be compared by coaches who were doing their own testing for national teams and colleges.

Re: Porcellian Graduate President Apologizes for Comments

Geoff Knauth — Wed, 20 Apr 2016 16:24:41 -0000

[earlier attempt to post this failed]

Maria Ashot: What I don't understand is your fixation on potential rape in the context of private clubs. Do you know of specific incidents? If so, have you contacted law enforcement, the college, or taken other action? I'm trying to determine if your attachment of risk of rape to private clubs is imagined or real. If it is imagined, you do clubs injustice by creating an association where there is less of a risk with clubs than in dormitories. As far as I know, the risk is much higher in dormitories than in clubs, yet the clubs are being targeted as though they have done something wrong when I have not seen the evidence. Have you?

Also, I don't understand why you keep mentioning that rape of men is as bad as rape of women. Of course it is! Why you say it again and again. I understand that rape is real, rape is horrible, rape has victims of both sexes, rape happens more frequently than people think and often goes unreported. I also understand that implying people you don't know are raping other people you don't know is slander. Or do you know real victims in the context of any specific private club? Porcellian members take pride that they have had no incidents ever. I get the impression there is something you know that you not saying. If you know of something concrete, if you know a victim and it is the victim's wish, then bring the information forward, to authorities if necessary, but please do not broadly malign the reputations of people in private clubs who have done no wrong.

I am not in a club, but I do not have anything against people who are in clubs. People are in clubs because it gives them a chance to relax and have fun in the company of friends with whom they feel kinship. I don't want to see them lose that during what seems like a witch hunt.

The people I know who are in clubs raise their children well, e.g., one person I know has a son (at another university) who recently defied his male peers and protected a woman from assault after she had consumed too much alcohol, making sure she got back to her residence safely. I am saying the people I know who are in clubs are good people, and they raise their children to take care of people, not abuse them. When you associate people in clubs with bad behavior, it flies in the face of what I know about them, and it really makes me want to ask you if you have actionable information, or not. If there are bad apples, remove the bad apples, but don't burn down the orchard.

Maria, you seem to think I don't know people who have been raped. Well, as a matter of fact I do. Not many, because it is very private information that few people share. But some close friends have told me of their experiences, so I know how traumatic it is for them. It is so traumatic that many never talk about it. My own mother was raped, though she never told me. I only learned of it after she died, when I found out she had been raped as a teenager by a doctor in an orphanage, and that somewhere in the world there is an older sibling, born in the late 1940s, whom I will probably never meet, whom my mother had to give up for adoption. It explains a lot about my mother, her lifelong struggle with mental illness, and her great reluctance to sign my own adoption papers when that time came. (I was adopted by loving cousins who did a lot for my mother too.)

I do support people coming forward with truthful information. I do not support rumor or insinuation. I do support efforts to raise awareness and to educate everyone to prevent rape, and to take action when rape occurs. I do not support efforts to malign people who have done no wrong.

Re: Overseers Candidate Donates to ‘Quasi-White Nationalist’ Group

Geoff Knauth — Mon, 18 Apr 2016 19:38:28 -0000

I do understand what's going on. You want me to waste my time on your behalf. I said if you want to find out about Ron's archaeology paper, write to him about it. If you don't want to do that, you're not that interested.

Re: Overseers Candidate Donates to ‘Quasi-White Nationalist’ Group

Geoff Knauth — Mon, 18 Apr 2016 12:29:03 -0000

And I'm not going to do your work for you either.

Re: Porcellian Graduate President Apologizes for Comments

Geoff Knauth — Sun, 17 Apr 2016 10:10:29 -0000

Maria Ashot, of course there should be Zero Tolerance for rape. If there is a rape, there should never be silence, it must be reported to law enforcement first, then the University, the person who is accused of the rape must be prosecuted, the person raped must be helped, and if there is an institution that promotes rape, it should be shut down or its personnel completely changed.

But I know of no rape, Zero Rape, None, that has occurred involving any of the people I know.

When I was in college or shortly afterward I remember a group of football players who were prosecuted for a gang rape, and their club was shut down, but that's the only incident I know of.

Your comment tells me you do not know Charlie Storey or people in the Porcellian Club. I am not a club member, but I know people in that club. I've known them for decades. I have never heard a word or even had the slightest inkling of a hint of suspicion that any of them or the people they hang out with have done anything wrong. I repeat for you: I know of no wrongdoing that Charlie Storey or any of the Porcellian people I know have ever done. Ever! Not in almost forty years. That is why I feel compelled to stick up for Charlie Storey. Charlie is just a calm, generous, warm-hearted guy that everyone loves. That's how I know you don't know him. I'm sure his kindness and gentle spirit are what led the Porcellian Club to make him graduate president in the first place. He is a good man, no matter what you might think. You are creating an association between him and rape culture that I believe to be completely false, inaccurate, unresearched, impulsive, and emblematic of an era when people use social media to destroy other people. Some day you may say or write a sentence that comes out wrong, and I hope to God social media doesn't try to destroy you. I refer you to the Golden Rule, for how you should treat others. I want social media attacks by strangers on innocent people to stop.

And of course rape must stop too, but that is a separate topic from whether finals clubs should become co-educational.

Charlie Storey, I believe, was writing from the perspective of a member of a club that has always been single sex. I know women who sometimes want to be among themselves, without men, not always, but sometimes. Well guess what? Men sometimes want to be among themselves, without women, not always, but sometimes. Why does this happen? Not, as you assume, so that people can behave badly, but just because people can relax for a short while, while not in the presence of the opposite sex. When people are of college age, sometimes there is a lot of tension between the sexes. Men sometimes take advantage of women, women sometimes take advantage of men. When a person is, briefly, in the company of members of his or her own sex, it removes that tension. When I read Charlie Storey's misworded statement, knowing Charlie, I guessed he meant that if you made the clubs co-educational, you might see more assault cases, not because the clubs are wired to generate assault, but because the clubs are a refuge from the pressures of society, and if you mix the clubs the way society is mixed, then the problems that are in society become problems in the clubs as well. That is how I interpreted Charlie's remark. You, and the Internet of strangers, interpreted his remark in a completely different way. So Charlie screwed up. He's still a great guy who would never harm anyone.

You and the Internet did what you could to bring complete censure of Charlie for one poorly worded statement, that I'm sure was not what you think he meant at all. Congratulations. His company, Harpoon Brewery, was attacked on social media. There were threats of boycotts. Twitter shut down their account. Charlie issued an immediate and heartfelt apology on the company's website, one that was difficult for me to read, because I know the pain Charlie is feeling, a pain that I think is completely undeserved. He did what is in complete keeping with his character. He protected his company and club by immediately resigning both the presidency of Harpoon Brewery and the graduate presidency of the Porcellian Club. My friends and I who have know him for decades ache for him and this situation he should never have been in. You have hurt my friend, and thus you have hurt me.

The irony of the situation is that at the moment the Porcellian broke with history and made a statement for the first time in over two hundred years, it came out wrong, and Charlie was viciously attacked. Let me ask you, when you wrote or spoke publicly for the first time, were you perfect, did the Internet attack you, would you want that for yourself? I feel guilt in that months ago, when I learned from friends in the Porcellian Club that Harvard was trying to tell them how to run their clubs, I advised them to engage with President Drew Faust and the rest of Harvard, to have discussions and work things out. I said that opening up would help. Well, has it? Maybe I was naive to think that all parties could come to the table together for frank discussions leading to a compromise that none of them might have though of before.

You wrote that cardinals and bishops stuck up for priests. Let me tell you, I am no cardinal or bishop. I have no supervisory control over any social club member. I am just Charlie's friend, from when we were on a very good rowing team together, and he was our collective hero. He still is our hero, by the way.

On the day this series of unfortunate events broke at Internet speed, I happen to be visiting a fellow friend from the US Rowing Team from the 1990s, who now works at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society. I remarked that I was visiting on a day when the Internet was destroying Society. I wished the Internet were not such a mean place, that interactions on the Internet could be more as they are in person, so that strangers from afar feel less compelled to destroy people they don't know. A woman there answered, "It's not the Internet's problem, it's society's problem."

Later that day, I was at a rowing club, talking with a woman who rowed at Harvard, someone about my age who knows Charlie Storey well, and knows many people from the Porcellian Club, and knows, like me, that this yet another example of a destructive social media firestorm. Her personal view is the finals clubs at Harvard are a bit of an anacronism, and that if they foster any kind of discrimination of opportunity, that has to change, and I agree with her on that. But I wonder if any of that supposed discrimination of opportunity really exists. Among the finals clubs people I know, I have not detected that they have been more richly rewarded than any other group of Harvard students. People who did great things with their lives became accomplished through hard work and some talent, but mostly hard work. I'm sure most of those were not in clubs at all.

Re: Overseers Candidate Donates to ‘Quasi-White Nationalist’ Group

Geoff Knauth — Fri, 15 Apr 2016 15:13:42 -0000

I do want you to write to Ron yourself about the paper he published, because you're the one with the burning desire to prove something I said right or wrong, and because it really does me no good to do your bidding, since I owe my time to family, work and friends. I also want you to write to Ron because he is a human being. It is fine to disagree with his opinions (I do), but he is not the bad person it seems you think he is.

Re: Porcellian Graduate President Apologizes for Comments

Geoff Knauth — Fri, 15 Apr 2016 15:00:55 -0000

Knowing Charlie Storey, I have to agree with you, that activists have misrepresented him.

Re: Overseers Candidate Donates to ‘Quasi-White Nationalist’ Group

Geoff Knauth — Fri, 15 Apr 2016 05:42:30 -0000

You "will need" a source? Are you a scholar? A skeptic? My statement that he was brilliant at physics and in mathematics was based on what our classmates were saying about him when I was in college 37 years ago. If you want reference to conversations among friends in the past, you could invent a time machine and eavesdrop, or ask God, or trust. But you don't have to trust. Who trusts anyone anymore?
As for the paper Ron wrote and published before his freshman year, that would be easier to check. You could write to Ron about that, since he would remember it. I think it was published in October 1979, just as freshman year began. What I remember is people saying it was a important paper that solved a puzzle a couple of millenia old about Egypt that archaeologists had long pursued. Ron worked out the puzzle of where something ought to be, said "Dig here," archaeologists did, and found what they were looking for.

Re: Porcellian Graduate President Apologizes for Comments

Geoff Knauth — Fri, 15 Apr 2016 05:30:45 -0000

Charlie Storey is a good man, among the very best. I've known him for 37 years. No, I'm not a club member, I know him from rowing. I'd have him in my boat any day, anywhere. He corrected himself quickly from a mistake, the mistake of saying something that was meant as a thoughtful general caution that but was worded in a way that could be misunderstood by strangers, a mistake that every person makes at some point. I'm not saying the politicians and media, aiming to show political correctness, are wrong in their criticism of the one sentence that was poorly worded, I'm saying it's obvious to me they don't know Charlie. I'm happy to write to any and all of the people who don't know him. I feel compelled to stick up for good people.

Re: Overseers Candidate Donates to ‘Quasi-White Nationalist’ Group

Geoff Knauth — Thu, 14 Apr 2016 14:21:38 -0000

corr.: strife, not strive, in last sentence

Re: Overseers Candidate Donates to ‘Quasi-White Nationalist’ Group

Geoff Knauth — Thu, 14 Apr 2016 07:07:52 -0000

[ TL;DR: I don't support Unz. I want diversity at Harvard. But I also want to know the background story, not just the headline. ]

I remember Ron Unz from the beginning of freshman year. Brilliant at physics and in mathematatics, before the year started he had published an article solving an ancient puzzle having to do with Egypt that people said could have been a master's thesis. Ron Unz seemed very nice, but absent-minded the way brilliant people can be, standing at the milk machine with milk overflowing his cereal bowl, as physics equations whirred in his head and he stared at the metal face of the machine, lost in thought. I never would have foreseen this article.

15-25 years ago I remember he was running for California governor against Pete Wilson in the Republican primary. He was interviewed on the News Hour, and what I got out of his interview was that he was single-issue: eliminating bilingual education because it was hobbling immigrants instead of helping them. According to Unz, he had a lot of support from parents of immigrant children, who wanted their children to assimilate faster, who thought bilingual education was itself a kind of segregation. Ron did not win the primary, Pete Wilson became governor before Arnold Schwarzenegger, and I heard no more about Ron until this year.

I don't live in California, though I've worked there and visited California. I know some Californians do feel overwhelmed with the number of immigrants who have appeared in some communities. To them it feels like an invasion, that some immigrants don't assimilate, that the numbers are too high. I view this article by the Crimson mostly in that light, that Ron Unz supports a side of debate that is controversial. Having not read Ron's blog--indeed I was unaware he had any kind of foundation--I don't know if Ron supports true debate, a debate that would include the immigrant perspective as well, or the views of people more sympathetic to immigrants.

That is what I wish, that Ron would, if he doesn't already, support debate from many perspectives. Is the Crimson article itself biased, or it is accurate? If it is accurate, if Ron Unz really is, well, one-sided about the issues presented, then I suppose it's not a surprise he did not become governor of California, and I don't think he will make it to the Board of Overseers or US Senate. A successful politician or leader, that is, one who will be remembered fondly a century later, must prove himself or herself truly open-minded to all viewpoints, to help us all sort out a path that moves us forward without causing unneeded strive and division.

Re: Her Long Walk: 27,000 Miles

Geoff Knauth — Tue, 01 Mar 2016 13:14:54 -0000

I didn't seem to me that Tom was laughing about it, but agreeing that it was a common problem.

Re: College Has Yet To Replace House Master Title

Geoff Knauth — Tue, 26 Jan 2016 09:33:45 -0000

I'm normally a sensitive person, but personally I think this issue goes too far in terms to catering to a vocal minority position looking for an issue where there has been none. I miss my house masters Hannah and Woody Hastings (North House). They will always be my masters to me. Masters in the sense of scholarship and gracious hosts and yes, family. Students going to the President's office and demanding something change that I don't think has ever bothered anyone before, at least as far as I know, well that bothers me.

Re: Emacs Lisp: a Command to Execute/Compile Current File

Geoff Knauth — Wed, 29 Oct 2014 12:36:10 -0000

Thanks!

Re: Written in Racket

Geoff Knauth — Thu, 25 Sep 2014 14:51:41 -0000

Thanks so much for helping out my son as he explored Racket over the last year. He now knows much more than I do. And that is a good thing.