Ronald P. Loui

Lake Road, Bay Village, OH r.p.loui @gmail

(All images and text © 2023-2024 RPL)

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Current: Adjunct Full Professor of CSDS at CWRU. Past: Tenured Associate Professor of CS/CSE and Speaker of the Faculty of Engineering (elected, with courtesy Executive Committee vote), WUSTL.

Special Topics Course in Fall: AI (For Better or Worse)/Current Issues An exploratory seminar for technical and non-technical students on autonomous systems and automatic decision-making software. Prompt engineering will be examined, as well as systems that detect or combat AI. Within assistive, generative, and proxy decision deployments, we will consider recurring problems such as non-determinism, robustness, risk, bias, stale and erroneous data, small worlds and insufficiently expressive features, overfitting, polysemy, explanation, and verification. Perspectives to include engineering problem-solving, law, policy, and management. National concerns of labor, defense technology, and education also to be considered. The class is open to all majors. Students should have a strong background in either engineering, science, or computer science.

Also teaching Operating Systems Spring and Fall. Linux Scripting Tools in the Spring.

Currently working on "Adding to the EU AI Liability Directive: Degree of Autonomy, Chain of Confidence, Inherent Flaws of Indecent Induction, and Mandatory Insurance, Second Edition of LAW OF AI (Oxford Press, invited) 2024.

Patents assigned to these companies cite my Wash U StL team's computer engineering work (not my patents, but our work presumably enabled or preceded their claims): Dell, Juniper Networks, HP, MainNerve, Protocol Acquisition, SiteSpect, Google, Fortinet, Throughputer, Amazon, Oracle, Cavium, IneoQuest, EMC, Gigamon, Lionic, Intel, FetchTech, IP Reservoir, Kuberre, Corel/JP Morgan Chase, SAP, Cisco, Roke Manor, Nokia, AT&T, Samsung, Canon, NetApp, Boeing, ETTRI, Advanced Micro Devices, Sharp, SRC, GTB, NXP, IBM, Archeo Futurus, Global Velocity, Exegy

SOME RECENT IEEE PAPERS (ETC) here
SOME CHAPTERS IN BOOKS here
SCHOLAR.GOOGLE here

Our AI and Law papers are #1 among papers there in 1995 and #1 among papers there in 2012, #14 and #21 in the journal's full 30-year history

Our Artificial Intelligence paper is #8 among papers there in 1992

Our ACM Computing Surveys paper is #6 among papers there in 2000

My Computational Intelligence papers are #1 among papers there in 1986 and #2 among papers there in 1998, probably top-40 and top-60 in that journal's 38-year history

My Communications of the ACM paper is #14 among papers there in 1983 (out of 226 listed).

Our Custom Computing (FCCM) paper is #7-best cited in the full 30-year history of that conference and #1 among its papers in 2003.

Our ICAIL papers are #6 among papers at the conference in 1993, and #4 among papers from 1997

Some unusual citation numbers (scholar.google.com, 9/19/23): • First paper (undergrad thesis): 358 cites • Most cited solo-authored papers: 358, 313, 175 cites • Most cited paper with doctoral student: 777 cites • Most cited paper with master's student: 391 cites • Most cited paper with undergrad student: 82 cites • Most cited patent: 234 cites • Most latent citation peak after publication: 28 years • 10th-best cited: 145 cites • top-20 articles: 10/20 solo authored, 16/20 without other cited authors at the time.

YEAR	MAIN LANGS			MAIN OS				MAIN EDITOR	WHERE

1975	Basic				paper				punch cards	8th/Punahou
1976	DartmouthBasic			DTimeShare			volatile typing	Punahou
1977	DartmouthBasic			DTimeShare			paper tape	Punahou
1978	RealityDBBasic/Fortran		Pick/DTimeShare			ED		Punahou/IndustryDataSvcs
1979	RealityDBBasic/Fortran		Pick/VMS			ED/EDT		Punahou/IndustryDataSvcs/Harvard
1980	RealityDBBasic/Fortran/Forth	Pick/Pr1MOS/VMS			ED/EDT		HirotaEngineering/IndustryDataSvcs/Harvard
1981	HarvardECL			Unix/TOPS10			vi		Harvard     ← U R HERE 
1982	VHDL/StanfordSAIL/APL		Unix/TOPS20			vi		Harvard
1983	c/ICON/Pascal/csh		Unix/VMS/Alto/AppleDOS		bravo		DEC/RochesterMS
1984	c/ICON				BSD/Alto/OriginalMac		bravo		RochesterMS
1985	c/LISP				BSD/Alto/OriginalMac		bravo		RochesterPhD
1986	c/LISP				BSD/Alto/OriginalMac		bravo		RochesterPhD
1987	c/LISP				BSD/Alto/OriginalMac		bravo		RochesterPhD
1988	c/LISP				Solaris/Tenex			vi		Stanford/RockwellPaloAlto
1989	c/LISP/.bat			Solaris/MSDOS6			vi		WashU
1990	c/LISP/.bat			Solaris/MSDOS6			vi		WashU
1991	c/LISP/.bat			Solaris/MSDOS6			vi		WashU
1992	gawk/LISP/.bat			Solaris/MSDOS6			vi		WashU
1993	gawk/TCL			Solaris/W3.1			vi		WashU
1994	gawk				Solaris/W3.1/LX3.1		vi		WashU
1995	gawk				Tru64/BSD/W95/OS2/LX3.1		vi		WashU
1996	gawk				Tru64/BSD/W95/NT/LX3.1		vi		WashU
1997	gawk/perl/Matlab		Tru64/BSD/W95/NT/LX3.1		vi		WashU
1998	gawk/perl/Matlab		Tru64/BSD/W98/NT		vi		WashU
1999	gawk/perl/php			Tru64/BSD/W98			vi		WashU
2000	gawk/js				Redhat7/W98/XP			vi		WashU
2001	gawk/js				Redhat7/W98			vi		WashU
2002	gawk/js				Redhat7/W98			vi		WashU
2003	gawk/js				Redhat7/W98			vi		WashU
2004	gawk/js				Redhat7/W98			vi		WashU
2005	gawk/js				Redhat7/W98			vi		WashU
2006	gawk/js/ruby/py			Redhat7/Fedora7/W98		vi		WashU
2007	gawk/js/mysql			Ubuntu/Mint/W7/bbOS		vi		WashU
2008	nawk/js/mysql			Ubuntu/Solaris/W7/bbOS		vim		CleClinc/CycorpAustin
2009	nawk/js/mysql			Ubuntu				vim		CleClinc/CycorpAustin
2010	nawk/js/mysql			Ubuntu				vim		CleClinc/CycorpAustin
2011	awk/js/mysql			Ubuntu				vim		CycorpAustin
2012	awk/js/mysql			Ubuntu/W7/W8			vim		Illinois
2013	awk/js/mysql			Ubuntu/Android/W7/W8		vim		Illinois
2014	awk/js/mysql			Ubuntu/Android/W7/W8		vim		Illinois
2015	awk/js/mysql			Ubuntu/Android/W7/W8		vim		Illinois
2016	awk/js/mysql			Ubuntu/Android/W10		vim		Illinois
2017	awk/js/sh/SQL/py		Ubuntu/Android/W10/KVM/S3	vim		LAstartup
2018	awk/js/sh/SQL/py		Ubuntu/Android/W10/KVM/S3	vim		LAstartup
2019	awk/js/php/c			Ubuntu/Android/W10/Xen		vim		CWRU
2020	awk/js/php/c/bash		Ubuntu/Android/W10/Xen		vim		CWRU
2021	awk/js/php/c/bash		Ubuntu/Android/W10/Xen		vim		CWRU
2022	awk/js/php/c/bash		Ubuntu/Android/W10/Xen/ChrOS	vim		CWRU
2023	awk/js/php/c/bash		Ubuntu/Android/Xen/ChrOS	vi		CWRU
2024	awk/js/php/c/bash		Ubuntu/Android/Xen/FireOS	vi		CWRU    ← I M HERE 
2025?	awk/js/?			Ubuntu/Android/?/?		vi		?
2026?	awk/js/?			Ubuntu/Android/?/?		vi		?

Photo I took Aug 12, 2023 at the Summer Horns concert in Dayton/Kettering. Why a big deal? Well, I haven't seen Dulfer in concert since 1993 in Leidseplein during ICAIL at Univ of Amsterdam (Intl Conf on AI and Law). I think the best saxophonist ever: best tone, best use of notes, best styles (70s soul/funk/disco brass), best danceability/listenability, best overall musicality, best longevity. I told her I started with Crusaders and Rollins, and then I heard her stuff. Not just me, but Bill Clinton and Lisa Simpson too. And I wouldn't have known about this concert except that a student in the linux scripting class turned in a project that provided upcoming concert notifications. His demo used this tour as example and I said, wait, I know that musical genre. So if you think your programming is just gluing together components and it's too late to have an idea that impacts the world, think again. This student's project just jazzed my world!

Some sax players I've maybe owned on vinyl or cd that I like a lot, but I think Candy Dulfer is even better than: Paul Desmond, Molly Duncan, Yusef Lateef, Don Myrick, Tom Scott, Chris Vadala, Wayne Shorter, Mark Colby, Wilton Felder, Eric Dolphy, Clifford Jordan, Gerry Mulligan, Michael Brecker, Fela Kuti, Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins, Bob Mintzer, Vincent Fossitt, Jay Beckenstein, Cannonball Adderley, Steve Tavaglione, Frank Wess, John Coltrane, Maceo Parker, Charlie Parker, Kirk Whalum, Boney James, David Sanborn, Coleman Hawkins, Clarence Clemons, Ronnie Laws, Grover Washington, Gato Barbieri, Benjamin Bossi, Rindy Ross, Cece Worrall, Branford Marsalis, Herb Geller, at least for overall content over many decades ... One gal beats them all! Female phrasing, not just males firing a barrage of notes.

What does an email response from a Nobel Economics Laureate look like?

I pointed out that fellow WashU Doug North was a neural net fanboy after his Nobel, and that I had traded email with a few Econ Nobels, including Ken Arrow about which room his seminar was in. Herb Simon wanted to discuss ai & poetry? I even have an early letter signed by Hurwicz and another by Harsanyi. Physics Nobel Ramsey gave me a B- in quantum but that was mainly because his class was very early in the morning (so I missed cough a few lectures). 2023 Chem Nobelist is in a photo below from college graduation (he lost even more hair than I did!).

BTW, I've agreed with Dybvig since I heard his opinion on neural nets back in 1990 when we were both Asst Profs at WashU and both of us knew a little somethin somethin about appled stats.

Also good company in the biblography of Anna Carabelli's 2023 paper on Keynes and Probability. She wrote a whole paragraph on my position and didn't even say I was wrong!

Why you should try to impress me. Message to a Google VP of Engineering on behalf of job applicant.

You should see the rec letter I wrote for a student to get him transferred to Stanford. Well, you can't, but take my word for it. Starts like this:

Colleagues: I've been a postdoc at Stanford, have two young relatives there now, just graduated a niece from the Farm, and have three cousins, my brother, his wife, and her sister who love the Tree and Tresider, with BSs, JD/MBA, and MDs. The brother hosts Stanford law recruiting and SoCal Cardinal board meetings. The other side boasts a cousin, our first Stanford grad in the family, whose company turns out more patents than any other company in Hawaii. And at Punahou School in Hawaii, many of our teachers were Stanford alums (my fourth grade teacher was coaching his son on Cardinal volleyball/Olympic teams recently), with 14 of my high school class attending Stanford. I think I know what Stanford likes. We've even had two family weddings in Stanford Chapel. So let me tell you about Mr. XXXXXXXXXXXXXX who is interested in transferring to Stanford ...

Nice to be in the 2012 Turing Award winner's most famous work, Probabilistic Reasoning in Intelligent Systems from 1988. Always thought I was just the footnote, but had time this summer to revisit.

Put me in the same paragraph as 2002 Econ Nobel winner Kahneman and in the same sentence as 1994 Econ Nobel winner Harsanyi. The three works of mine Judea cited were all unpublished technical reports at the time.

Judea Pearl wrote the recommendation letter for my job at Wash U too.

1998 Canadian textbook on AI, Computational Intelligence: A Logical Approach, when reasoning was fashionable, snagged a Further Reading mention. Actually nice to see their 3rd edition 2023 textbook still references our Chesñevar et al. Canadians have had us for 25 years in their textbook, which is not too bad. Many thanks, David.

An airplane I consulted on for McDonnell-Douglas in St. Louis. Sensor fusion problem still with us today.

Sort of why Teslas run into parked trucks and Boeing 737 MAXs suddenly dive into the ground.

Growler is the USN electronic warfare platform. Australian Super Hornets might be in Ukraine soon; US F/A-18s seem to be doing Blue Angel airshows these days. -- Update: and now striking Houthi targets in Yemen, probably helping shoot down drones and cruise missiles aimed at Israel.

Our patent that people fought over viciously. Expired recently. Didn't think it was such a big deal until NPR was telling me about my own work. And first commercial embodiment -- the GV2000. Mostly due to Lockwood and his students, but Moscola/Pachos were my undergrads first, and Levine/Covington often worked with me up the chain.

Somewhat surprising you can just read this at IEEE Xplore, but the Defense Secretary's office ok'd for publication. Considering how many people screamed headlines that this was so interesting, the download count from IEEE is very low! Sometimes fiction baits clicks better than fact (if the viral bad press had had any semblance to reality, perhaps I would have been concerned too!).

One of our engineers on this project, my third doctoral student (with theses on Genetic Algorithms and meta-Bayesian selection speedup), won the McDonalds NLP/voiceAI competition and was tapped to create the McD corporate AI lab: HERE. So if you voice-order super-sized fries and get extra large flies, that's Moshe's python (always blame the data set!).

What our citation-based search engine looked like in the mid-90s -- Jeff Norman's idea after CS undergrad took him to law school. Lotta fun gawk programming for me and high school Joe (currently quantum computing DARPA director). I was calling it Data Harvesting because we were in the Midwest. Also, early web mail with attachments, because I didn't want to telnet to wustl from Europe c. 1993. And some code from hserver, the Harvard alumni network, probably my first gawk program. Pre-HTML social network: imagine that. Was inspired by seeing a CalTech student chatting with fellow alums on a server they kept open for that purpose. Student tried to sell it to MIT's Development Office. I see this is a HTML/CGI revision, so this is hserver2, not the original mailserver version.

A really interesting investigation I did with an undergraduate in CS for her BS independent study and senior thesis (HERE) was cited 10x, as an unpublished work. Six of those were important papers by the COMPUTERS AND THOUGHT AWARD WINNER, Nick Jennings.

A minor thing, but I like it. Here's an early paper from Martha Pollack, recently Cornell's President, citing my early work. Probably Kurt's co-author input. That last reference, et ai, Bratman?

Just found this 2022 bachelor's thesis at the great Munich University saying nice things. I gotta meet this guy and say nice things back. Of course, Europe all starts with Vreeswijk's doctoral dissertation in Amsterdam, 1993 (same year as ICAIL, but made separate trips, and swung through in 1991 after Eklund's defense in Sweden). I called Gerard Vreeswijk the Dutch Wittgenstein. He took me to a Croatian restaurant and apparently I tipped too much: in that time and place, not needed. Immigrant mother owner told her daughter to make sure she gave me my overcoat and held it open like I was a someone. I saw the instructions being whispered. Nicely done, Ron.

For a while, it was fun comparing my undergrad thesis to Bill Gates's undergrad tech report (my values are in red, so I was cited before he was and peaked higher!), but I believe he has pulled ahead (yes, past two years his [19 and 20] vs my [6 and 10], ugh). On other metrics, comparison requires log^k scale, nontrivial k. But as I tell economists, I've purchased things in life that dear Bill couldn't get at any price (hint: be a nice person in a service-oriented economy). Sometimes a latte is not just coffee -- depends on how you treat the barrista.

One of the four conferences I organized in St. Louis. Interesting banquet speaker listed there. Law school dean, Joel Seligman, who graciously let us use his building became the U of Rochester President. Both people in the courtroom photo, Prof. Fred Schauer and Dr. Karl Branting, as well as one just out of frame, Prof. Trevor Bench-Capon, passed away recently.

A collection of essays I worked on before the end of the 2008 campaign.

Letter from future US President in his Law Review days. I'll scan the White House note some day.

2-term R-Gov of Hawaii was nice enough to give me an hour of her time in the R-Gov of Illinois office when she was starring as COO of IL.

I told her I'd work for her if she got back into politics as a centrist/bipartisan, but I thought she should try not to cut the budget of the University of Illinois system so deeply so fast. My idea was to agree with her that tightened campus budgets made sense given funding realities, but that closing and restarting institutions with huge infrastructure investments was terrible long-term waste.

Next I see, she's in Cleveland helping nominate a Presidential candidate at a convention and the extreme part of her party is booing her for divluging that she's Jewish and can work with the other party. Hard to believe she met with such vitriol, but that's how it was.

Not too many advisors get to see a doctoral student celebrated in a Festschrift. The reason is simply that Guillermo Simari was already a professor when he got his PhD in CS at Wash U. In my article in this work, I introduce the ideas of dialectical predicate refinement and severing a correlate of the consequent in implicature, which I had puzzled over while sitting with cafe con leche at Cafe Muñoz in Argentina.

In the Essays in Honor of my doctoral advisor, I presented a clean mathematical setup for a process model of negotiation that relies on pessimism to drive rational concession. The basic idea is to place a probability distribution, at each time, over where settlement might be found. This changes expectation, which motivates concession. It's a beautiful model -- better than both of Nash's solutions -- that I presented at the Spanish national AI conference as invited plenary speaker in San Sebastián, and mentioned in my Jurix invited plenary at Panthéon-Sorbonne -- Paris. Fresh off the plane in rumpled clothes, arrived just in time to open the conference very unexpectedly. "You can give your talk now?" "I haven't used the bathroom since NYC, but let's try.")

Looks like some of the slides can be found HERE and paper HERE.

A bit hilarious that the conservative Federalist is mad about our company doing DoD work in 2023 while appearing to know little about it. Reminds me of 2006 hatchet piece from the left that appeared in the National Journal 17yrs earlier. That was hilariously hallucinatory too. Manufactured outrage is good clickbait on both sides, I guess. Both sides amplify disinformation often originating overseas because of course democracies live in the center and adversaries have read Sun Tzu.

PeakMetrics analysis shows this hit job meme was plucked for Russian propaganda (or worse). Probably places like RT realize that with PeakMetrics' tracking abilities, foreign influence campaigns are more easily exposed. So they have to attack PeakMetrics itself. Nick and Bobby and company doing important work, supporting disinformation detection.

I should add the Federalist 14th Amendment Section 3 story about Baude and Sachs here... Baude's first big paper cites our defeasible work re:meaning, and I cited him right back. So now he's gunning for Trump: "... shall [not] have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability." Defeasibility as de-disability?

Wash U colleagues seemed appalled that I accepted the invitation to be a main speaker at the ITEST Interfaith Science, Technology, and Theology retreat among SLU Catholics (even a nun in a habit in attendance). 2005. But now that AI ethics concerns are all the rage, and our AAAI President gets an audience with the Pope in Rome, I'm posting the picture of me professing at the pulpit.

I equated individual worker automation with institutional role automation in society. The decades-in-progress death-by-a-thousand-cuts inflicted on humanity when interfacing decision proxying nonhumans, or institutional humans with no decision authority of their own, was worse than R2D2 going all HAL or Agent Smith on us. Worry first about PayPal account hijacking, nuclear plant control mishaps and internet horrors before AI threatens you personally and physically, unless you are a Wall Street trader without a high speed ticker box. In any case, i concluded, it was traffic lights and a's that don't smell different from b's that were ruining my dog's enjoyment of her world, and somehow AI was responsible for even this. (Full text HERE)

Apparently the address where I spent most of my childhood was rebuilt as a big new house for Fleetwood Mac bassist John McVie. Looks a lot nicer with his budget. Where he has a pool I remember climbing a plumeria tree, hoops on a downhill slanted cracked concrete slab (missed free throws rolled back to you), and digging in the mud. I suspect he lost a lot of the original views of the ocean in order to improve privacy. His wife and daughter offered me a tour but I had to be somewhere else.

Photo I took of Giannis Antetokounmpo visiting Cleveland as MVP. Not yet a champion, but would be the next year.

NOTES FOR 40TH COLLEGE REUNION RED BOOK

Famous AI guy once said "you're just like Feynman, only not as smart!"
I'll take it.
Academic hero Herb Simon likely confused my brother with me.
Harvard's Quine
wrote to apologize for not reading my claims on truth and assertability more carefully.
Introduced Baku-born friend Zadeh as "a national treasure"
(ours, not theirs, but the statue is in Baku).

US President called me "skinnybones" in the 70s,
published me as "slender" and "Chinese" in the 80s,
noted my "fascinating work" in philosophy of law via 90s email,
and penned about my "enthusiasm" (implying that it should be curbed?)
on official stationery from the House (the White one).
Another high school classmate and BOLD AND BEAUTIFUL star
calls me "Ronnie" on facebook
and she's the only one who does that.

Met Danny Pearl when he was interning in Boston.
Later he convinced his dad to let me deliver a book to his kid sister at Stanford.
Dad got the Turing, but son gave me the trust.

Randomly commented on a teen AMERICAN IDOL contestant's youtube
that she should sing
OVER THE RAINBOW;
she replied with a heart emoji and a month later she sang it.
Best ever? 1M views.

Sent the Dutch greatest saxophonist
(not just the greatest Dutch saxophonist)
a mix tape to the Amsterdam address she gave me.
I think her MY FUNK is a reply to CHOCOLATE CITY which was on that tape.
Had a Dutch professor write in a book that I am
"the author of one of the most beautiful opening lines ever".
I admit it was inspired by the semicolon structure that opens Keynes' 1908 thesis.
God I love the Dutch; God I love semicolons.

Traded barbs with Justice Scalia on Supreme Court "disrespect" for stare decisis.
Wrote an awk programming manual with a Harvard freshman then decided to shelve it
because he said he wanted to sit on the Court someday.
Currently Scalia Professor of Law at Harvard.

Shared an awards stage with the guy who gave us Unix
and shared pizza with the guy who would give us MacOS.
Both during grad school.
Still have my SocSci106 final paper for Prof Oettinger
where I discussed "dysinformation" as a form of war in 1982.
Y'all misspelling it.

Invited a fave philosopher named Dan Dennett
to shoot pool on my table because he was a fellow Harvard grad.
Next I see he's got a full page photo in an encyclopedia of philosophy.
Two future tech billionaires also shot on my table when they were just artist/programmers in St Louis.
Magic 8 ball?

Helped start a company that went up against ex-CIA/ex-FBI director William Webster's
competing startup;
they were the university's favored insider, so we lost.
Co-founded a company that was soon joined in the space
by the winners of the Harvard College tech startup competition.
Changed direction; still going.

'82 pal thanked
"Ronald P. Loui, Paul Romer, ... Lawrence H. Summers, Hal Varian, Janet Yellen"
in a paper:
alphabetical order?
I have a screen grab of a "Microsoft founder" looking at my linkedin profile.
Was that for his AI Lab or his NBA team?

'83 Jeff R straightened out the Hebrew for "encompasseth" so I see that it's the Balikh that waters Eden.
That soon led to my 1:2, but 1:5 after "100" fit of Torah years to our years,
of which I am newly quite proud.

CHICAGO TRIBUNE said my perfect, beautiful dog looked like Audrey Hepburn.

Got a nice copy of LETTERS OF MRS ADAMS two volumes in vellum for my wife's birthday.

That's it. Hope it's been worth the trouble.

BEGIN { while (x=rand()) print x } END { }

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WORSHIPED IN E-SEMITIC EBLA DURING IRKAB-DAMU, 2340BCE E-SEMITIC SARGONIC/AKKADIAN EMPIRE, 2334-2154BCE NW-SEMITIC AMORITE/MAR-TU TRIBES DESTROY E-SEMITIC EBLA, 2250BCE E-SEMITIC NARAM-SIN LOCATES NW-SEMITIC AMORITE TRIBES AT JEBEL-BISHRI, 2240BCE TELL LEILAN/BRAK 4.2 ka BP DROUGHT EVENT IN KHABUR/HABOR AND BALIKH BASINS, c. 2200-1900BCE VOLCANIC TEPHRA FALL PHASE I LAYER TELL LEILAN, c. 2200BCE LAKE VAN FALLS 30-60m FROM DROUGHT, c. 2190BCE E-SEMITIC SARGONIC/AKKADIAN DYNASTY ENDS, 2154BCE 2148 In the Beginning, ie, at the end of E-Semitic Mesopotamia, beginning of Mar-Tu/Amorite era, Pison/Gihon=Baalikh+upperEuphrates/Habor 2148 b. Adam, first legendary W-Semite Balikh/Khabur River nomad to engage urban agriculturalists during historic regional drought, E-Semitic empire collapse, downmigration GUDEA OF NON-AMORITE, NON-ELAMITE, NON-SUMERIAN(?) LAGASH, r. 2144-2124BCE 2134 b. Cain, first recorded W-Semite Khabur River (unsuccessful) agriculturalist and urbanist of note 2129 b. Seth, fatherhoods will be 13.5-19, lifespans 74-81 until Noah 2112 b. Enos, first of three where Torah drops lead digit of fatherhood age, see Josephus NEO-SUMERIAN THIRD DYNASTY OF UR, UR-III, 2112-2004BCE 2096 b. Cainan NEO-SUMERIAN SHULGI-OF-UR-III, r. 2094-2047BCE 2082 b. Mahal-al-el 2068 b. Irad/Jared 2054 b. Enoch, alive to comment on birth of Noah according to Gen Apocryphon NEO-SUMERIAN SHULGI STARTS AMURRU/MARDU WALL TO RESIST DISPLACED AMORITES, 2054BCE AKKAD-GUTI-UR III COLLAPSE SYNCHRONIC WITH CLIMATE DISRUPTION IN AEGEAN, EGYPT, INDUS RVC, c. 2050BCE AMORITES FOUND ALALAKH, 2050BCE 2040 b. Methus-el-ah 2024 b. Lamech, dies same year as Methuselah, 1969, indicating non-natural deaths NEO-SUMERIAN SHU-SIN CONTINUES AMURRU/MARDU WALL TO RESIST DISPLACED AMORITES, 2034BCE E-SEMITIC PUZUR-ASHUR-I FOUNDS FIRST ASSYRIAN STATE, 2025BCE 2009 b. No-ah, upmountain survivor of 20' deep pluvial Karaca Dag tephra lahar, Mard-in Ark (Ark=fortress in Persian, Mardin=fortress in Aramean/Kurdish, Ararat=Urartu in Hebrew), 1959 AMORITE ISHBI-ERRA TAKES NEO-SUMERIAN ISIN, 2017BCE NEO-SUMERIAN IBBI-SIN DIES, ENDING UR-III, 2004BCE IE HITTITES BEGIN ABSORBING HATTIANS/HETHITES IN CENTRAL ANATOLIA, c. 2000BCE AMORITE KINGDOM OF QATNA BEGINS, c. 2000BCE AMORITE PALACE AT ALALAKH, c. 2000BCE AMORITE TUTTUL WORSHIPING DAGAN UPSTREAM FROM MARI, c. 2000BCE 1973 b. Shem HURRIAN FIRST REFERENCE TO TESHUB (HADAD), 1966BCE 1959 Khabur River Lahar (Noah's Flood) 1956 b. Arphaxad/Arpachsad 1938 b. Sal-ah 1923 b. Eber/Heber 1906 b. Peleg RESETTLEMENT OF TELL LEILAN AFTER 300YR ABANDONMENT, HEAVY RAIN SPELLS AMID LONG DROUGHT, c. 1900BCE AMORITE FIRST THEOPHORIC HADAD SUFFIX APPEARS, IPIQ-ADAD-I, RULER OF ESHNUNNA c. 1900BCE ELAMITE SUKKALMAH DYNASTY FOUNDED, 1900-1500BCE AMORITE DYNASTY OF BABYLON FOUNDED BY SUMU-ABUM, 1894BCE 1891 b. Reu/Ragau 1875 b. Serug, lifespans from Noah to Terah 53-61 AMORITE SECOND THEOPHORIC HADAD SUFFIX APPEARS, NUR-ADAD, RULER OF LARSA, c. 1868BCE 1860 b. Nahor-I PROTO-CANAANITE/SINAITIC INSCRIPTIONS, c. 1850BCE 1845 b. Ter-ah, dies shortly after son Haran dies 1792, indicating foul play, see Josephus IE HITTITES ATTACK KANESH/NESHA/KULTEPE IN CENTRAL ANATOLIA, 1833BCE AMORITES/CANAANITES BEGIN IMMIGRATING INTO ASIATIC AVARIS ON NILE DELTA, c. 1830BCE AMORITE/HURRIAN YAMHAD STATE (YAM/ARAM HADAD), HADAD/HALAB/ALEPPO, 1810-1517BCE 1810 b. Abram AMORITE HAMMURABI BORN IN BABYLON OLD KINGDOM, 1810BCE AMORITE SHAMASH/SHAMSHI-ADAD-I FOUNDS KINGDOM OF UPPER MESOPOTAMIA, 1808BCE AMORITE YAKBIM FOUNDS LOWER NILE 14TH DYNASTY AT AVARIS, 1805-1650BCE 1805 b. Sarai AMORITE CONQUEST OF URUK/ISIN, 1787-1784BCE ELAMITE DEITY LAGAMAL ATTESTED IN MARI, SUSA, 1780BCE AMORITE TEMPLE TO SET/CANAANITE BA'AL-HADAD IN AVARIS, c. 1780BCE AMORITE SHAMSHI-ADAD-I DIES IN SHUBAT-ENLIL, KHABUR/HABOR RIVER BASIN, 1776BCE 1773 Abram and Sarai leave Sanliurfa/Harran SHIFTING ALLIANCES OF ELAM WITH AMORITES: MARI, ASSUR, BABYLON, YAMHAD, ESHNUNNA, LARSA, c. 1770BCE 1769 Sarai rebuffs Qareh of Avaris 1768 Abram defeats Kudu-Zulush(-Lagamal) + Amorite kings, Sodom due East of Jericho on the Northern Plain AMORITE ISHME-DAGAN-I-OF-ASSUR REIGN ENDS, 1765BCE AMORITE YARIM-LIM-I-OF-YAMHAD, ALLIED WITH MARI AND ELAM, DIES, 1764BCE AMORITE HAMMURABI-OF-BABYLON (AMMUR-ABI) TURNS ON AMORITE RIM-SIN-I-OF-LARSA, SON OF KUDUR-MABUK-(LAGAMER), 1763BCE 1767 b. Ishma-el ELAMITE GENERAL KUNNAM'S EXPEDITION TO KHABUR/HABOR RIVER BASIN UNDER SIWE-PALAR-KHUPPAK-OF-ELAM, 1762BCE AMORITE ZIMRI-LIM-OF-MARI FALLS TO HAMMURABI-OF-BABYLON, 1761BCE AMORITE HAMMURABI-I-OF-YAMHAD EXTENDS TO KHABUR/HABOR RIVER, 1761BCE 1760 b. Isaac, circumcision indicates tribal rejection of child sacrifice, Sara-i-ah is possessive -i-ah theophoric for Asherah (Yahweh cult) vs -i-el (Ba'al/Astarte) AMORITE/HABIRU KHANA/HANAEANS EMERGE AT TERQA, 1760BCE AMORITE HAMMURABI-OF-BABYLON COMPOSES LEGAL CODE, 1755-1750BCE AMORITES HAMMURABI-I-OF-YAMHAD AND HAMMURABI-OF-BABYLON, IN DETENTE, BOTH DIE 1750BCE PRE-HITTITE PITHANA CONQUERS KANESH/NESA, c. 1750BCE 1748 Binding of Isaac, substitution in Mlkdm ritual, effective schism from Eshnunna-Ugarit-Amorite-Hurrian extant Baal-Hadad/Teshub sacrificial cult continued throughout Canaan and Mesopotamia, later Northern Kingdom and Phoenicia ELAMITE SIWE-PALAR-KHUPPAK DIES, 1745BCE 1730 b. Jacob 1690 b. Levi, who exacts revenge on Schechem 10 years later, and b. Judah same year (Irish twin) 1685 b. Joseph, sold into slavery 8.5 years later 1673 b. Kehath/Caath 1670 Joseph helps Salitis found Hyksos 15th Dynasty 1668 Jacob's extended family enters Goshen, Judah possibly 1667 to make time for Tamar 1657 b. Amram/Ambram CANAANITE HYKSOS 15TH DYNASTY BEGINS, c. 1650BCE FIRST IE HITTITE KING HATTUSILI-I ATTACKS YAMHAD'S ALLY ALALAKH, c. 1650BCE 1630 d. Joseph, ending favorable treatment of shepherd kings (1631-1625 Testaments: Simeon, Reuben, Judah, Zebulun, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, and Levi pass at ages 60, 62, 60, 57, 62, 63, 62, 62, 62, 66) SAKIR-HAR HYKSOS RULER, NAME MEANING MEMORY OF HADAD, TO 1590BCE 1625 b. Moses, Kenite Zipporah (Midian schism) will be instrumental in YHWH promotion 1605 Moses campaigns south of Thebes on behalf of Avaris, takes Nubian wife IE HITTITE MURSILI-I SACKS YAHMHAD'S ALEPPO, TAKING HAMMURABI-III, c. 1600BCE IE HITTITE MURSILI-I EJECTS AMORITES FROM BABYLON, TAKES MARDUK, 1595BCE THERA ERUPTION AVG OF LATEST CARBON DATING, HELIOPOLIS SPARED BUT NOT AVARIS FROM WINDBORNE ASH CLOUD, 1585BCE 1585 Exodus from Hyksos Apepi in Avaris after impending famine and contumacy/defiance of first-born sacrifice edict 1565 Jericho destruction City-IV carbon date THEBAN SEQUENRE-TAO BEGINS CAMPAIGN AGAINST HYKSOS APEPI/APOPHIS BEREFT OF GOSHEN BUFFER, 1560BCE CITADEL CONSTRUCTED IN AVARIS TO RESIST THEBAN KAMOSE, 1550BCE CANAANITE HYKSOS EJECTED FROM GOSHEN BY AHMOSE I, 1552-1531BCE LEVANTINE CAMPAIGNS OF AHMOSE I TO BREAK HYKSOS CITIES, 1548BCE HURRIAN/IE MITTANI/NAHARIN STATE EXTENDS FROM TIGRIS TO ORONTES, c. 1500BCE THUTMOSE-III CAMPAIGNS IN CANAAN/BATTLE OF MEGIDDO 1457BCE 973 First Temple start under Solomon, 612 years after Exodus from Avaris, 592 years after razing Jericho CANAANITE WHEAT LONG PLANTING SEASON OCT-JAN: 1x/12mo, 1 SHANAH:1 YEAR

18th-17thC BCE MOSES MATH


1810 b. Abram (@41 in 1768)
1805 b. Sarai (5 year diff)
1760 b. Isaac (to Abraham@50, Sarah@45)
1730 b. Jacob (to Isaac@30, Rebekah@25?)
1690 b. Levi (3rd son of Leah's 7, Jacob@40, Leah@18?)
1673 b. Kehath (to Levi@17.5)
1670 b. Hyksos Dynasty with Salitis rise assisted by Hebrew immigrant Joseph
1657 b. Amram (to Kehath@16, Levi@53)
1625 b. Moses (3rd of 3, Amram@35, Jochebed@35)
1585 d. Akrotiri in Thera Eruption, destroying Avaris food supply (recent carbon dates)
1565 d. Jericho City-IV (recent carbon date)
1550 d. Avaris Pelusian captial of Hyksos Dynasty

Dig 300yrs deeper and you might find what you're looking for.
Confusing Avaris with Pi-Ramses is like calling New Amsterdam New York.

STRONG | CENTER
===
{ STRONG COUNTRY }

Most programmers these days aren't trained by good programmers ...

They don't care about user experience;
They get A's for commenting their code

Machine Learning hides its
relevant small samples
in
irrelevant large training sets


Sarah was 45 (not 90)

Do the math


We scripted to be light, free, and agile;

Today's "scripting":  heavy rigid frameworks



Unix tools:
Do ONE THING and DO IT WELL

is vim really an improved vi?
So many modes.


Probability could connect points on the path
Not just discount utilities at some horizon


I studied Probability, Fallibility, Corrigibility, Belief Revision, Defeasance:
Have some humility with your assertions.
When you are always adamant, I wonder about your belief formation process.


If you throw away specificity defeaters
You throw away your argument logic


Ad Hominem is not a fallacy in inductive logic:
Rate your sources when you assess probabilities!


Mandatory insurance for AI
is coming soon

Two words for claimants:  proportional liability


Payoff Matrix = Wrong Idea:

It matters not what you can get,
But what you can do with it.


Transactional value:  
Not just What, but How, Why, and Whom

You can't buy the smile that you can get just by being nice.
And you have to know how to value that smile.


Utility calculus

Should shift at each Maslow level, duh.


"It's good exercise."
Something you don't hear much anymore.

Weak People → Automation → Weaker People



We maybe just found a bug in pthread_mutex_lock:
be very scared



I like my personal discipline and creativity,
Better than their awful automation



Don't tell me you have an argument;
tell me why your argument beats the counterarguments.



awk + cgi =
fast, clean, simple, eternal


EDEN: FOUR HEADS IN PADDAN ARAM

Pison = Balikh and upper Euphrates including Harran Plain
Gihon = Habor Triangle including Tells Leilan, Halaf, Mozan, Brak
Hiddekel = Tigris from Subartu toward Assur
Perath = Euphrates below Tuttul or Terqa


bash syntax is awful.  awk is clean:  

#! /usr/bin/awk -f  # this is bash calling awk

BEGIN { 
  system("bash")  # this is awk calling bash
}


Probability intervals measure your ignorance.

Point probabilities demonstrate it.


If your rules aren't a bit defeasible
Your meanings aren't very specifiable


It's not really ethics training most decent people need;
It's better epistemics.


Isn't all implicature defeasible inference?
Isn't all analogy defeasible inference?
Aren't all decision and risk analyses defeasible?
Aren't all statistical arguments defeasible?


Procedural justice is when process produces justified non-equivalent
outcomes according to rules that transform inputs to outputs in an
appropriately constrained way, usually monotonic in a shared concept of
merit, at least probabilistically, and usually efficient in time; it is
a more advanced social concept than distributive equality, aka equity,
though it usually contains equality of opportunity or at least adequate
opportunity to respond; and this concept of justice stands at the heart
of constructive social reality, law, political economy, and civilized
games/contests/tournaments/trials.


CS curriculum does so much damage allowing boolean minds to hide behind boolean logic.
If anyone really cared, they'd get taught probability, even engineering epistemology.


Pretty sure a NN classifier is just doing rule induction
with nodes for exceptional subclasses
and exceptions to exceptions
with some quasi-linears and some quasi-booleans.
It's got to be lying about small sample projection confidence.
I call it indecent induction.
Should monitor its meta, and visualize its sample specificities.


Software Today:

unnecessary bloat 
and
insufficient testing


Lotta engineers

Trying to save pennies in one dimension
While paying a lotta $ in another


AI:
AGI and Singularity are Hype
But IDIOCRACY is Real


We are here to help start careers
Not end them


Serious US engineers still the best:
Integrity + Practicality + Thought


FAVORITE JAZZ SAX

1960 - Felder/Cannonball
1970 - Grover/Getz/Gato/Gyra
1980 - Scott/Sonny/Sanborn
1990 - Candy Dulfer
2000 - Candy Dulfer
2010 - Candy Dulfer
2020 - Candy Dulfer

VERY QUICK SUMMARY OF SECRETS FROM 50YRS BUILDING DIY HIFI SPEAKERS

Simple box enclosure is fine, but get your mids/highs mounted above the box as dipole radiators (B&W style). A slight roll at the edges of the box can be helpful if you find you must locate the mid or high on the face. Supplementary backfiring tweeters at angles can sometimes help (though Bose designs are mostly BS).

You want the listener to sense the space, not just consume forward-radiation. This is part of the problem with studio engineers recording in small, hard-surfaced rooms.

Crossover is fine for low end and high end, but the mid should bypass the electronics which will introduce slew rate and phase issues. RLC circuits are your enemy unless you are protecting a tweeter from blowing or quieting the upper range of a woofer. I think most amps have better tone controls than speakers have acceptable crossovers.

I prefer small ribbon planar magnetic panels for the mids/highs and omit the traditional tweeter (more likely adds problems than adds imaging). But electrostatics and planar magnetics can be too precisian without a cone or horn in the mix. Sometimes you need something that will buzz, flare, or just move the air.

A compression horn will help reproduce brass timbres and dynamics, but needs to be amped separately or pointed backwards because it is too efficient. Or just give it its own volume puck.

In fact, if you want the character of a particular source, you should reproduce it with a similar material: ribbon edge for guitar strings, horns for horns, metals for metals, carbon/graphite/wood/high-density paper cones for natural percussion instruments, body-radiating larger strings, and woodwinds. The Heil AMT accordion driver is excellent for voice, though silk tweeters might be better. Think about waveforms, not transforms. It's a simple question of the material's tendency to comply with or resist the generation of a complex waveform with sequential vibration, and of course the harmonics.

Bass should be infinite baffle, unless you are driving disco speakers. Port rhymes with distort. Nothing wrong with disco bass, but it's a lot higher in the woofer frequency range than people realize. And for disco, you need punch, so driver flexibility and excursion: less stiff polypropylene, or port.

There is no perfect single speaker design because the source material is mixed in studio so variably; this can be even more pronounced than the geometry of the room in which the speakers find themselves (well) placed. At different volumes, different driver mixes will have different dynamics. That's actually desirable. So your dance speakers are not the same design as your audiophile critical listening full-attention ones; why would you expect them to be?

Sometimes you want an 8" bass, sometimes dual 10". In one build, I have a 5.25" pair in each monitor, with the crossover point low as one might find on an 8" or 10" woofer. Woofer crossover is more important than size, though enclosure needs volume. I've had 14" ported, but it's too slow. You want a modern material like a woven carbon, that's 8-10" ideally. This does take some power, but not a huge amount, and clipping protection is not your main concern here. I've never had success with a 6.5" low, or pair of lows, but 8", 10", dual 10", and ported 10" all have worked for me.

Shannon-Nyquist does not apply to non-infinite-repeating waveforms that are not superpositions of sine functions. That said, the problem is mostly for D2A conversion on the way out, not A2D during sampling. If you have all-electronic musical instruments, maybe not so important. If you want to restore localization lost through phase jumbling, you can do funky things at the transduction.

Think of wavelets, not just Fourier transforms. Hear the analogue of localized jpeg-like image compression.

Perfect symmetry is not necessary. In fact, asymmetric drivers with different resonances can add some interest to bland digital recordings that have had phase jumbled by layers of electronics. Restores localization of source within the soundstage.

Instead of using electronics to mix the drivers, I prefer choosing drivers that overlap, exposing direct natural sweet spots, but overriding each other's weak ranges.

One way to keep the phase coherent, and increase the dispersion for wider listening angles, is to align drivers around a central vertical column, but not insist that all be front-firing. Do not separate mids/highs more than an inch or two in the horizontal plane. Bass towers can be separate, but that's not ideal.

Admit that most designs will sound different to a prone, seated, or standing listener, and different to an on- vs off-axis listener. You can't control the angle of the ears on the head either, or the hair, the pillow, or the hands behind the head. All of these things will affect the sound more than the feet, the cables, the L/R balance, or the driver sensitivity manufacturing mismatch, which do not produce first-order effects. Phase, however, is a primay issue and too often ignored. Frequency range is a primary concern, though frequency response itself (e.g., flatness), is a secondary concern and mostly a marketing lie (how does flatness change with reference signal?).

BEFORE:

AFTER (SOUNDS BETTER):

DOCS AND PRE-MEDS ETC IN FAMILY TREE

GRANDFATHER IMMIGRATED Feb 29, 1912 (though his father had visited HNL 1880, worked StL Fair in 1904, endured SF EQUAKE 1906)

		7 CHILDREN		23 GRANDCHILDREN	CURRENT

		[<PHD]			[DPh]+[DPh]		[DPh] [DPh]+[DPh] .	BRANCH:  UCB/UCD/UCSD/UCLA
					[DDS]
					[MD]			. [MDPHD] .+[MD]
					.
					.+[PHD]			..

		.			.						BRANCH:  UC?
					[DPh]			...
					.

		[PHD]			[JD]+[JD]		[PHD]			BRANCH:  UCB/UWISCONSIN/OBERLIN

		[MD]			[MD]			.. [MD] [MD] 		BRANCH:  UCB/STANFORD/UCLA/UCSF
					[MD]			[<MD?] [<MD?]
					[MD]+[JD]		..
					.
					[MD]+[MDPHD]		.

		[MD]+[MD]		[PHD]			.+[MD] .		BRANCH:  UCB/PENN/HARVARD/MIT/STANFORD/YALE/BROWN/MAYO/NYU/DARTMOUTH/SWARTHMORE/BRYNMAWR/LSE/USC/UCSB/UCSD/UIUC/BU/EARLHAM 
					[JDMBA]+[JD]		+[MD] [JD] [<JD]
					.
					[MD]			... [<JD] [<PHD]
					[PHD] ←←← me

		[<MD?]									BRANCH:  UCB

		.+[DDS]			.+[MDPHD]		....			BRANCH:  UCB/HARVARD/STANFORD/PRINCETON
					[JD]			[<PHD]
					[MD]+[MDPHD]		..
					.			...

Includes:  Lt Cmdr ONR USN Reserve WW2 and Korea decades of engineering on SR-71 & strategic nuclear, Capt USAF 58th Tactical Hospital Korea, Mechanic USAAF China Burma India C-46 Transport WW2.  DoD civilian contractors at Hickam USAFB computer networks, contract work for USAF AFRL and USASC consulting on USN/USMC F/A-18 EF & G and for DHS & NSA, USAF startup accelerators program for disinformation detection, US State Dept cyber security.

On my Hawaii family side, uncle in US Army WW2 founding design company with decades of USN contracts, also US Army Artillery WW2, USMC Kaneohe Vietnam era.

MY EULOGY FOR TERRENCE

EULOGY (PART II) FOR TERRENCE DESMOND LOUI My big brother Terry was a special person who lived an improbable life. I am here to help us calculate just how improbable his life was. Terrence was an American-born Chinese guy who was very smart, liked gadgets, and who was supposed to be a doctor. Well, nothing unusual there. In high school, there were three boys who liked the girl next door. Terrence got to take her to the military ball. Lucky guy. How lucky? One in three. Terrence was the third of five boys. Uncle Allen always liked Terry the best. Probability? One out of five. One out of three, for taking the girl next door to the ball, times one out of five, for being Uncle Allen's favorite, makes one out of fifteen. We get to multiply these together because they are jointly improbable. Terrence Desmond Loui was ambidextrous. I looked it up. 3%, or one in every 33 people, is ambidextrous. One in fifteen times one in 33 is... (anyone)? One in 495. In his senior year at Punahou, Terrence was one of three students who were in JROTC and on the math team. That's three out of about 410 in the class of '78, or one out of 137. Times one in 495, call it one out of 68,000. Of course, Terrence survived the brain tumor that doctors said would kill him. Maybe some people used the inexact phrase, "one in a million." Let's assume the doctors were good, and it was really one in a thousand. Times one in 68,000. That makes one in seventy million. One year, when we were exiting the Great America Theme Park in San Jose, California, Mom said she wanted someone to win her a stuffed animal. So Bill threw some balls or darts or something and after a few tries, won her a blue dog about two and a half feet tall. Then I tried for the white buffalo that was about three times bigger. I lobbed three softballs into a milk bottle and got Buffie. Mom was so happy -- it was clearly a one in a thousand kind of prize -- this was a big buffalo. Now it was Terry's turn. Terrence spied Dino, a four-foot by four-foot by four-foot monster of a prize, easily twice the size of Buffie. He had to toss some balls into a line in a wooden tic-tac-toe box. The hard part was actually getting all the balls to settle in the squares -- maybe 10% of the balls actually landed in the puzzle and the others bounced out. Terry got the first two balls in the upper left corner and the middle boxes. The third ball bounced out. His final ball bounced into one losing box, then bounced out, went into another losing one, bounced out again, and finally settled into the lower right box, for a tic-tac-toe. A happy day indeed. I wrote a program to simulate this. One million tries, just 81 Dino's. But Terry got it. Terry's life was special. One in seventy million times 81 in a million is like ONE in EIGHT HUNDRED TRILLION. That's a big number -- 100x larger than the Chinese GDP, as we like to say. But we're not done yet. When Terry died, his watch stopped at the exact minute he passed away. Also, in his last game of solitaire, after many years of not playing, the cards opened right up for him. In Terrence's last few days, the rain blew down Manoa Valley in drifts. I told Missi that the island was angry. I didn't think much of it at the time, but it did shower heavily on the Marco Polo the moment Terry passed. So heavily that the people coming to the apartment remarked on it. And the next evening, May 25th, sheets of rain could be seen out at sea, shadowing a crimson-red moon, rising through twilight, while fireworks burst over Waikiki. I'd never seen anything like it. Earlier that week, Mom says she saw the most intense double rainbow she'd ever seen, three days in a row, culminating on the day that Terry died. And it was closer than any she could remember. Cecilia said she couldn't remember anything like that either. Just taking the number of days that Mom and I have lived so far, 20,000 for me, and 30,000 for Mom, that's one in five hundred million. With this observation, Terry's life was more improbable than our solar system, among all the billions and billions of stars in all the galaxies. And there's more. A lot of strange things happened in the weeks after Terry passed away. So far, I've been a bit playful with my mathematics. But things are going to start getting harder to understand, and I'm no longer just joking around. Terrence Loui was a man of faith who believed in a world full of mystery. He believed that goodness was an unsurmountable power. He believed in his country. He believed that good conquered evil. He believed in everlasting life. He believed in the miraculous. After Terry died, I went to his room to look at his things. There was a strange gust of wind, boom-boom, knocking on the window near my head when I sat down to open his box of toy tanks. Terry hated when his younger brothers would touch his tanks. That's why he kept them in his safe. Missi and I joked that Terry was angry we were touching his things. It sprinkled when Mom went to identify Terry's body, on an otherwise sunny day, and it happened again when she went to claim his ashes. There was a lone deer standing in my back yard when I got home to Ohio, showing me he was eating, looking right at me and unafraid, making the same face that Terry used to when he would eat. Slowly, like he was enjoying taking his time and he wasn't going to be hurried. In DC, one week after we lost Terrence, I was in a restaurant where I saw two kids, two brothers, two or three years apart, where the older one was helping the younger one reach the towels and soap. Just like Terrence used to help me in public bathrooms when I was too short to reach. Maybe this kind of thing happens all the time, and I just don't notice. But I've never noticed. And it happened again the next day, two brothers, same ages, same thing, in the airport. The next week, Missi and I drove to Austin. On our way, we passed a series of RV's, recreation vehicles, branded TERRY. Right there on the interstate highway. We had been talking about taking Mom and Terry on a trip in a[n] RV. Who knew there was an RV brand named TERRY? I'd never see that before. In Austin, when we arrived, I awoke from a vivid nightmare. In the nightmare, someone was going through some very private papers that belonged to me and my brother. We couldn't lock them up, and we couldn't drive them away. Not sure about the symbolism, but they were in the back of a yellow Volkswagen. I called mom to tell her I just had a nightmare and was up, and she said she was at that very moment going through Terrence's most personal papers. I'm not like Terrence. I'm a man of science and skepticism, logic and probability. I don't believe as easily as he does, in the unexplained world. But get this. Exactly two hours after Terry passed at 2pm, Missi's iPad received a new puzzle called "An Act of Mourning." Several of the hints contained obvious ways of putting together Terrence's name. That's what we were all doing at 4pm, and it's why we are all here today. For an Act of Mourning. And the clues were T-E-R and R-Y, which spell TERRY. You don't have to use combinatorics to see that T-E-R and R-Y spell TERRY. And L-A-M, which is our nickname for Missi. And a dozen more clues all of which seemed to relate to him: ICE and CUP, IZ and OOF. We had just fed him ice in a cup, played the Ice Age DVD, and played Brother Iz's version of Hawaii Aloha. OOF is apparently what he liked to say to Missi. It's crazy, right? I don't know how to calculate the probability of such a strange event as this. I know Apple claims its iPad is not your average laptop, but that's really pretty special. Just like my BIG brother Terrence. I smile when I think of just how amazing his life was. He has given us the most precious gifts, with his own belief in life's higher powers: like love and generosity, his inexplicable kindness, and his loyalty -- he was loyal beyond all logic or calculation. We thank him for his strong faith, in life, his saintly courage in illness, and his unforgettable, improbable example.

DR. SUSAN CHINN'S EULOGY FOR MOM

My Auntie Florence was a true force of nature -- born to shake up the world and leave us in awe. She was formidable. She was unstoppable. Before the age of 8, Auntie Florence knew she was going to become a medical doctor. As we know, from junior high school onwards - Auntie Florence successfully pursued roles of leadership and academic excellence. Auntie Florence did everything well. She was brilliant, precise and exacting. I love that she could add columns of 3 digit numbers, calculate sales tax in her head. This July when we visited, she wanted to get the record straight on many things. She wanted me to understand specifics having to do with the ancestral village; that Grandma insisted on the misspelling of her own name, Leung. Leung was spelled with an 'O' instead of 'U'. And so it went, forever. Grandma refused to change. As you can see stubbornness is transferred across the generations. Without question, Auntie Florence's priority was the well-being of her 5 sons. Huge kudos to the original Tiger Mom who nurtured, supported, directed, and inspired Michael, Warren, William, Terrence, and Ronald to greatness. She loved her boys. Auntie Florence also took tremendous pride in and deeply cared for her nephews and nieces. Sometimes I think she especially favored her nieces -- taking great interest in what we were doing, offering advice and encouragement, passing down beautiful pieces of jewelry. Before it became a widely understood concept, Auntie Florence was a feminist. She believed that women were equal to the men; sometimes maybe, even better. Women deserved the same opportunities as men. In her day, Auntie Florence bumped up against gender and cultural barriers, again and again -- she was female; she was Chinese; her parents were immigrants. Grandma and Grandpa were the ultimate believers in the American Dream, giving up what was known and what was familiar, for the possibility of a better, freer life. Auntie Florence took it to another level. She dared to challenge social norms to in order to fulfill her personal callings. Being the eldest daughter of this first generation born in the U.S., Auntie Florence had great fortune-- along with her siblings, to be educated at UC Berkeley. But Auntie Florence also wanted to be a physician and the odds were stacked against her. So what does one do when the medical school admissions office tells you that you won't be accepted because you are a woman? Do you change your aspirations? No way! Did Aunt Florence feel a teensy bit intimidated being the only woman physician training alongside 40 men? Probably. But do you resign your post and give up? No!!! You make the opportunities yours, work incredibly hard and you prove yourself worthy, equal, better. Auntie Florence lived by example and she taught by example. Auntie Florence championed the causes of women's health and of domestic violence prevention more than 20 years ago. She she brought mobile breast and cervical cancer screening clinics to the rural areas of Oahu and to neighboring islands. She was appointed to Hawaii state commission and task force addressing domestic violence. During our July visit, Auntie Florence produced a copy of Hawaii State Medical Journal for which she had served as chief editor on the issue of domestic violence. So why did Auntie Florence pull herself out of bed, retrieve her from her locked file cabinets, the copy Hawaii State Medical Journal? It was to remind me of what was important to her and what should remain important to us. Auntie Florence devoted herself to fighting for what is right and just, bringing to light what was previously unmentionable. Professionally, she treated and cared for her ill patients and broadly, she extended her care to the people of Hawaii. Underlying Aunt Florence's accomplishments-- both domestic and professional - was her tough determination to make a difference. Auntie Florence faced more than her fair share of challenges throughout her life; she answered them with resolve, persistence, resilience. I urge you remember what she has taught us: fight a good; fight a brilliant fight. Fight for what you know in your heart to be right and fair. Don't shrink from the issues; address them squarely and face on. Stay current and be relevant. Also, remember high style is better than low style. Never lose your sense of humor. Finally, Auntie Florence wants us to stay a close family. As you probably realize, Auntie Florence was hugely instrumental in the family reunion this summer. We will honor our dear Aunt Florence by remembering one another, nurturing the family ties which provide us the strength, hope, and love that sustains us through the ages. Auntie Florence has returned home and is reunited with Terry, Grandpa and Grandma, her brothers Uncle Allen, Uncle Leland, Uncle Gabby, and my Pop, probably resuming the argument of who is the favorite child in the family. Auntie Florence, rest assured, we have learned your lessons well and we too will carry on.

PROF MICHAEL'S EULOGY FOR MOM

Eulogy Michael C. Loui October 28, 2017 Before I begin, I want to acknowledge that this eulogy represents a team effort, with contributions by my brothers Warren, Bill, and Ronald, with input from our wives Cindy, Rose, Sheree, and Missi. They are responsible for the good parts; I am responsible for any errors. My mother was born as Florence Chinn on March 29, 1927, in Sacramento, California. She was the elder of two daughters of Ned and Leong See Chinn, who also had four sons. Her family valued education and hard work. Although her father was not schooled beyond the eighth grade, all six of his children graduated from high school and went on to college. While growing up, my mother worked as the cashier in the family grocery store because she spoke English plus five Chinese dialects, and she could add three columns of digits and calculate the tax in her head. My mother attended California Junior High School in Sacramento. While there, she served as class president, vice president, secretary, and student body vice president. Simultaneously, she attended the Kui Wah Chinese Language School where she was chosen the class valedictorian. She went to C. K. McClatchy High School, where she won the Seal Bearer California Federation scholarship and graduated with highest honors. She earned an associate's degree from Sacramento Junior College. While in junior college, she was the president of Phi Theta Kappa (National Junior College Honor Society), the Jai Sei Chi Chinese student club, and the West Coast Chinese Student Intercollegiate Organization. She graduated with great distinction in 1947. My mother continued her education at the University of California, Berkeley. She attended classes in the Bay area during the week and then took the train back to Sacramento to work at her father's store on weekends. While at Berkeley, she was in the Honor Students Club, the Chinese Students Club, and the Premedical Students Club. She graduated with honors in 1949. While visiting in China in the 1930s, my mother was inspired to become a medical doctor because she saw the great need for health care. Despite top grades in college, she was told by the dean of one medical school that she would not be accepted because they had already filled their quota of one female student for the upcoming year. Determined and undeterred, my mother applied to the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania and was accepted for early admission. She earned the Professor of Medicine Award for the outstanding senior medical student at Women's Med. After graduating in 1953, she did her internship year at Sacramento County Hospital. She was the only female doctor among 40 physicians in training. The program director marveled that she could recite from memory the status of all of her 20 patients in the daily morning report. He admitted that she was the best young doctor he'd seen in 30 years, even better than her brother Franklin. Then she was selected for training in the internal medicine program at the world-renowned University of Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia. While at the University of Pennsylvania, she married in 1954. During the internal medicine residency, my mother also worked toward a master of science degree. Unfortunately, shortly after she defended her master's thesis in 1955, I was born. As a consequence, she never submitted the thesis. So I interfered with her completion of the master's degree, but maybe I could be forgiven because I was only a newborn baby at the time. Then in 1956, my brother Warren was born. In 1959, pregnant with my brother Terry, my mother moved with her family to Honolulu, Hawaii. My brother Bill was born in 1960, and my brother Ronald in 1961. After Ronald, there was clearly no point in continuing: with Ronald, she had achieved perfection. We were the five Chinese brothers. From our mother, we learned the value of education. All five of us went to college on the Mainland, and four of us earned graduate degrees. I am an engineering professor, Warren is an attorney, Bill is a physician, and Ronald is a computer scientist. My mother was one of the first Chinese female board certified internists in Hawaii. Despite working full time as a physician, she also volunteered for the Punahou School Carnival, the Hawaii Medical Society Domestic Violence Committee, and the St. Francis Medical Center. After the removal of a brain tumor, she worked for the Hawaii chapter of the American Cancer Society as the screening education coordinator for their "Butterfly Bus," which provided mobile cancer screening in rural areas and the neighbor islands. She taught 60 registered nurses and 200 volunteer lay workers to screen for breast and cervical cancers. Subsequently, my mother worked as a medical consultant for the Health and Human Services Department of the State of Hawaii. She won a national award for her program to fight fraud and abuse, which saved Hawaii's Medicaid program $2 million dollars over 6 years. My mother made several vital contributions to women's health in Hawaii. She was appointed to a state commission, coordinating council, and task force on domestic violence prevention starting in 1995. She was the chief editor of a special issue of the Hawaii Medical Journal on domestic violence in 1996. For many years, my mother was a caregiver for my brother Terry, who had survived a brain tumor in childhood. She was herself a survivor of multiple strokes and other major cardiovascular events, and had had surgery to remove a brain tumor, even during her most productive professional years. She and Terry later found great joy learning to play the ukulele and singing at friends' birthday parties. When Terry died in 2012, she endowed a scholarship in his name at Chaminade University. My mother took tremendous pride and delight in her ten grandchildren. The first eight were all boys, but finally two girls appeared. She liked to send them lee-see money that was designated for ice cream. She never tired of watching the VHS videos that Cindy and I recorded of our two sons and their Loui cousins when they were very young. Even after the Internet provided e-mail and video communication, my mother communicated by writing letters in her elegant cursive handwriting, which is becoming a lost art. Fiercely independent to the end, my mother passed away peacefully at home on September 20. We will miss her.

ONE PRETTY GOOD LIFE:

HONOLULU:

BOSTON:

ROCHESTER (NY):

BRENTWOOD (CA): PALO ALTO: SAARBRÜCKEN/LINKÖPING:
ROCHESTER (MN): BAHIA BLANCA: TOKYO: MELBOURNE: BONN:

SF: BRENTWOOD (MO): LADUE/UNIV CITY: BUENOS AIRES:

ST LOUIS:

VEGAS: CAHOKIA: LISBOA: MORE PALO ALTO: EVANSVILLE: BRUXELLES:

SACTO: DC: MORE HONOLULU:

CLE CLINIC: MORE DC: AUSTIN:

SPRINGFIELD:

CHICAGO: SAN DIEGO: GRAND FORKS: MORE PALO ALTO:
PEORIA: URBANA: DAYTON: ORLANDO: LA:

AVON LAKE/BAY VILLAGE/ROCKY RIVER/LAKEWOOD:

CLEVELAND:

ONE PRETTY GOOD WIFE:

PROPOSED OBIT (COVID ERA PRECAUTION)

Ronald Prescott Loui was born the son of Florence Jew Chinn MD
in Honolulu, Dec nn, 1961, youngest of five brothers.
Educated at Punahou School and Harvard, he had his doctorate from Rochester
and was a postdoc at Stanford.

Tenured in the Engineering School at Wash U St. Louis, he left academia to work on current national problems.
He returned to lecturing at Case Western in Cleveland in 2019.
Professor Loui's publications were in epistemology, legal philosophy, logic, decision, risk, value, fairness, negotiation, surveillance, cyberwar, systems engineering, computer education, computer science and engineering, hardware, software, applications, and theory.

He was a Unix superuser.

He gave lectures on artificial intelligence in a third of US states and in Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Argentina, Germany, and Canada, and at law schools in Tokyo, Melbourne, Buenos Aires, Chicago, DC, Boston, NYC, Amsterdam, Maastricht, Brussels, Paris, Nice, and Pisa,
mostly before the age of 40.

After 9/11 he worked on a famous project for US intelligence.
Over 40 years, his work was for the US Army/USASC, US Navy/USMC, USAF/AFRL, DARPA/IAO/DTO, NSA/SAIC, FBI, DHS, and NSF.
He also consulted on a project with the Cleveland Clinic.

Ronald Loui was a classic ENTP personality
who never missed a point on a standardized math exam,
had an IQ over 150,
and was captain of his high school state championship math team.

He had many interests: dance, sculpture, portrait photography, gardening, hifi audio, cars, antiquarian papers, linguistics, poetics, architecture, politics, foreign policy, demographics, personality types,
and sports analytics.
His recent investigations revealed an improved timeline for
Patriarchs in the Pentateuch.

He is survived by wife Melissa Anne Clark,
brothers Michael PhD, Warren JDMBA, and William MD and their families.
His mother and brother Terrence and beloved dogs predeceased him.