Phil 3.31.17

Keeping this for reference. From Wikipedia:

Principles that motivate citizen behaviour according to Montesquieu

Driving each classification of political system, according to Montesquieu, must be what he calls a “principle”. This principle acts as a spring or motor to motivate behavior on the part of the citizens in ways that will tend to support that regime and make it function smoothly.

  • For democratic republics (and to a somewhat lesser extent for aristocratic republics), this spring is the love of virtue—the willingness to put the interests of the community ahead of private interests.
  • For monarchies, the spring is the love of honor—the desire to attain greater rank and privilege.
  • Finally, for despotisms, the spring is the fear of the ruler.

A political system cannot last long if its appropriate principle is lacking. Montesquieu claims, for example, that the English failed to establish a republic after the Civil War (1642–1651) because the society lacked the requisite love of virtue.

7:00 – 8:00 Research

  • Some back-and forth with Wane on him attending the CI conference.
  • Nice talk with Don yesterday. Played with LaTex and discussed how, what and why to change behaviors of the particles going forward.
  • Started in the Illustrator version of the poster.
  • In Defense of Interactive Graphics

8:30 – 4:30 BRC

  • Working on hdfs_csv_reader.py
    • Write out sparse file queue – done
    • Read in queue – partial. Currently at line 60: 
      print(filtered) # TODO: go and read all these files. Will need to be HADOOP-compatable later
    • Assemble DataFrame
    • By the way, this line of code in Python: 
      filtered = [dir_name+"/"+name for name in all_files if file_prefix in name]
    • Is pretty much the same as this piece of C code. I guess some things have gotten better? 
      char** buildFilteredList(char* dirName, char* filePrefix, char* allFiles){
	// count the number of spaces
	int i;
	int filecount = 0; 
	for (i = 0; i < strlen(allFiles); ++i){
		if(allFiles[i] == ' ')
			++fileCount;
	}
	char *fileList[fileCount];
	int numchars = strlen(filePrefix);
	filecount = 0; 
	for (i = 0; i < strlen(allFiles); ++i){
		char* sptr = allFiles[i];
		if(strncmp(filePrefix, sptr, numchars) == 0)
			fileList[filecount++] = sptr;	
	}
	return fileList;
}
  • Long discussion with Aaron about ResearchBrowser design. We’re thinking about SPAs communicating through a lightweight chrome (and other(?)) plugin that mediates communication between tabs