Can the anti-trust suits be far behind?
But since its debut last summer, Google Earth has received attention of an unexpected sort. Officials of several nations have expressed alarm over its detailed display of government buildings, military installations and other important sites within their borders.
India, whose laws sharply restrict satellite and aerial photography, has been particularly outspoken. "It could severely compromise a country's security," V. S. Ramamurthy, secretary in India's federal Department of Science and Technology, said of Google Earth. And India's surveyor general, Maj. Gen. M. Gopal Rao, said, "They ought to have asked us."
I will particularly relish the plight of my (emotionally) Anti-Microsoft (but philospophicall) Libertarian friends who while strictly anti-regulation quietly root for the fall of my company. All of them are big Google fans.
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Terrorist Groups?
The FBI has been watching a lot of folks with no seeming ties to Al Queda or other islamofacist groups. Who? Well, according to the NYT:
After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, John Ashcroft, who was then attorney general, loosened restrictions on the F.B.I.'s investigative powers, giving the bureau greater ability to visit and monitor Web sites, mosques and other public entities in developing terrorism leads. The bureau has used that authority to investigate not only groups with suspected ties to foreign terrorists, but also protest groups suspected of having links to violent or disruptive activities.
Violent groups like:
the Vegan Community Project
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (interest in determining the location of a protest over llama fur )
and, my personal favorite:
Catholic Workers (for, now get this, "semi-communistic ideology.")
While I'm no fan of the catholics and I have actually made the argument that they are communists, I have to object to the FBI investingating them, even though I disagree.
After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, John Ashcroft, who was then attorney general, loosened restrictions on the F.B.I.'s investigative powers, giving the bureau greater ability to visit and monitor Web sites, mosques and other public entities in developing terrorism leads. The bureau has used that authority to investigate not only groups with suspected ties to foreign terrorists, but also protest groups suspected of having links to violent or disruptive activities.
Violent groups like:
the Vegan Community Project
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (interest in determining the location of a protest over llama fur )
and, my personal favorite:
Catholic Workers (for, now get this, "semi-communistic ideology.")
While I'm no fan of the catholics and I have actually made the argument that they are communists, I have to object to the FBI investingating them, even though I disagree.
Monday, December 19, 2005
Fact or Fiction? You be the Judge
Is this real, or fake?
THOUGH he did not know it at the time, the idea came to Howard Stapleton when he was 12 and visiting a London factory with his father.
He could not bear the noise from high-frequency welding equipment, but the workers didn't hear a thing.
Now 39, Mr Stapleton has taken the lesson he learned that day — that children can hear sounds at higher frequencies than adults can — to make a device that he hopes will solve the problem of obstreperous teenagers who hang around outside shops and cause trouble.
The device, called the Mosquito ("It's small and annoying," Mr Stapleton said), emits a high-frequency pulsing sound that he claims can be heard by most people younger than 20 and almost no one older than 30. The sound is designed to so irritate young people that after several minutes, they cannot stand it and go away.
So far, the Mosquito has been road-tested in only one place, at the entrance to a convenience store in the town of Barry, South Wales. Surly teenagers used to plant themselves just outside the door, smoking, drinking, swearing at customers and making disruptive forays inside.
Robert Gough, who owns the store with his parents, said the youths would sometimes fight, steal and assault staff. Last month, Mr Stapleton gave him a Mosquito for a free trial. The results were almost instant. It was as if someone had used anti-teenager spray around the entrance. Where youths used to congregate, now there is no one.
At first, members of the usual crowd repeatedly went inside the store with their fingers in their ears and "begging me to turn it off", Mr Gough said. But he held firm and avoided possible confrontations: "I told them it was to keep birds away because of the bird flu epidemic."
Mr Stapleton, a security consultant, used his children as guinea pigs, trying different noise and frequency levels before settling on a pulsating tone he said was more unbearable, and which can be broadcast at 75 decibels, within government safety limits.
"I didn't want to make it hurt. It just has to nag at them," he said.
"It's very difficult to shoplift when you have your fingers in your ears."
Answer in the comments
THOUGH he did not know it at the time, the idea came to Howard Stapleton when he was 12 and visiting a London factory with his father.
He could not bear the noise from high-frequency welding equipment, but the workers didn't hear a thing.
Now 39, Mr Stapleton has taken the lesson he learned that day — that children can hear sounds at higher frequencies than adults can — to make a device that he hopes will solve the problem of obstreperous teenagers who hang around outside shops and cause trouble.
The device, called the Mosquito ("It's small and annoying," Mr Stapleton said), emits a high-frequency pulsing sound that he claims can be heard by most people younger than 20 and almost no one older than 30. The sound is designed to so irritate young people that after several minutes, they cannot stand it and go away.
So far, the Mosquito has been road-tested in only one place, at the entrance to a convenience store in the town of Barry, South Wales. Surly teenagers used to plant themselves just outside the door, smoking, drinking, swearing at customers and making disruptive forays inside.
Robert Gough, who owns the store with his parents, said the youths would sometimes fight, steal and assault staff. Last month, Mr Stapleton gave him a Mosquito for a free trial. The results were almost instant. It was as if someone had used anti-teenager spray around the entrance. Where youths used to congregate, now there is no one.
At first, members of the usual crowd repeatedly went inside the store with their fingers in their ears and "begging me to turn it off", Mr Gough said. But he held firm and avoided possible confrontations: "I told them it was to keep birds away because of the bird flu epidemic."
Mr Stapleton, a security consultant, used his children as guinea pigs, trying different noise and frequency levels before settling on a pulsating tone he said was more unbearable, and which can be broadcast at 75 decibels, within government safety limits.
"I didn't want to make it hurt. It just has to nag at them," he said.
"It's very difficult to shoplift when you have your fingers in your ears."
Answer in the comments
New Computer Security Virus: Humans
This is also pretty good (yes, I am reading Cryptogram today).
H1.3 How to determine if you are at risk-
Ask yourself the question, "Who am I?" If answered, the system is at risk.
H1.3 How to determine if you are at risk-
Ask yourself the question, "Who am I?" If answered, the system is at risk.
How to Avoid a Wiretap
Excellent piece of analysis:
In the most serious countermeasures we discovered, a wiretap subject superimposes a continuous low-amplitude "C-tone" audio signal over normal call audio on the monitored line. The tone is misinterpreted by the wiretap system as an "on-hook" signal, which mutes monitored call audio and suspends audio recording. Most loop extender systems, as well as at least some CALEA systems, appear to be vulnerable to this countermeasure. Audio examples (in MP3 format) of this countermeasure can be found below.
Loop extender systems are susceptible to other countermeasures as well. In particular, a subject can employ a simple computer-aided dialing procedure (which we call "confusion/evasion dialing") that prevents the dialed outgoing telephone numbers from being recorded accurately by the tap. Wiretap subjects can also falsely indicate the ending times for calls they make and receive and can inject false records of outgoing and incoming calls (appearing to be to or from any numbers they choose) into pen register logs.
In the most serious countermeasures we discovered, a wiretap subject superimposes a continuous low-amplitude "C-tone" audio signal over normal call audio on the monitored line. The tone is misinterpreted by the wiretap system as an "on-hook" signal, which mutes monitored call audio and suspends audio recording. Most loop extender systems, as well as at least some CALEA systems, appear to be vulnerable to this countermeasure. Audio examples (in MP3 format) of this countermeasure can be found below.
Loop extender systems are susceptible to other countermeasures as well. In particular, a subject can employ a simple computer-aided dialing procedure (which we call "confusion/evasion dialing") that prevents the dialed outgoing telephone numbers from being recorded accurately by the tap. Wiretap subjects can also falsely indicate the ending times for calls they make and receive and can inject false records of outgoing and incoming calls (appearing to be to or from any numbers they choose) into pen register logs.
Bill O'Reilly
Has lost his nuts. If you find them, please send them to FOX News where, in fact, all nuts should be sent.
And finally, it seems that the closer we get to Christmas, the closer Bill O'Reilly gets to a nervous breakdown. The Falafel Master was back in the news again last week after claiming that "In Plano, Texas, a school told students they couldn't wear red and green because they are Christmas colors."
Oh really? Turns out that's not quite true. In fact, it's not even remotely true. In fact, the school district's attorneys subsequently sent Bill a letter requesting that "in the future, he ask his fact checkers to do a more thorough job of confirming the facts before he airs them." Oops.
But apparently Plano isn't the only town featured in O'Reilly's bizarre no-red-or-green-colors-for-you fantasy. Here's what he had to say about Saginaw, Michigan:
In Saginaw, Michigan, the township opposes red and green clothing on anyone. In Saginaw Township, they basically said, anybody, we don't want you to wear red or green. I would dress up head to toe in red to green if I were in Saginaw, Michigan.
According to "Mid-Michigan's News Leader" WNEM-TV5, "O'Reilly's comments are flat-out not true. [Township supervisor Tim] Braun goes on to say the township hall has red and green Christmas lights adorning the building at night."
Off his meds, I tell ya.
So I have an idea. I'm so sick of FOX news, idiots like O'Reilly, factfree commentary etc.
I'm going to send a bag of nuts to Bill and encourage you to do the same. I'm going to send out an email chain-letter kind of thing, please forward it as much as possible.
The Address for FOX News is:
1211 Avenue of the Americas
New York City, New York, United States, 10036-8795
I'm ordering them from here.
http://www.diamondorganics.com/ShowView/prod_detail_list/43#livingnuts
Nuts to you Bill O'Reilly!
And finally, it seems that the closer we get to Christmas, the closer Bill O'Reilly gets to a nervous breakdown. The Falafel Master was back in the news again last week after claiming that "In Plano, Texas, a school told students they couldn't wear red and green because they are Christmas colors."
Oh really? Turns out that's not quite true. In fact, it's not even remotely true. In fact, the school district's attorneys subsequently sent Bill a letter requesting that "in the future, he ask his fact checkers to do a more thorough job of confirming the facts before he airs them." Oops.
But apparently Plano isn't the only town featured in O'Reilly's bizarre no-red-or-green-colors-for-you fantasy. Here's what he had to say about Saginaw, Michigan:
In Saginaw, Michigan, the township opposes red and green clothing on anyone. In Saginaw Township, they basically said, anybody, we don't want you to wear red or green. I would dress up head to toe in red to green if I were in Saginaw, Michigan.
According to "Mid-Michigan's News Leader" WNEM-TV5, "O'Reilly's comments are flat-out not true. [Township supervisor Tim] Braun goes on to say the township hall has red and green Christmas lights adorning the building at night."
Off his meds, I tell ya.
So I have an idea. I'm so sick of FOX news, idiots like O'Reilly, factfree commentary etc.
I'm going to send a bag of nuts to Bill and encourage you to do the same. I'm going to send out an email chain-letter kind of thing, please forward it as much as possible.
The Address for FOX News is:
1211 Avenue of the Americas
New York City, New York, United States, 10036-8795
I'm ordering them from here.
http://www.diamondorganics.com/ShowView/prod_detail_list/43#livingnuts
Nuts to you Bill O'Reilly!
Friday, December 16, 2005
"Write something funny"
A reader enjoins me to "write something funny", and comments on my light blogging of late. Sorry all, I've been busy at work this week (Santa is a facist and we of the Elves Union have been contemplating a strike, along with the Brotherhood of Flying Raindeer and the Light and Tinslers Union Local 24. Lots of voting, alcohol and declaritive statements since Sunday).
Also, I must admit, loggin has been light because, in part, I'm having a lot of trouble typing. Don't know why, probably becuase I have put in a number of late nights and early mornings.
I'll try to write something amusing tomorrow.
Also, I must admit, loggin has been light because, in part, I'm having a lot of trouble typing. Don't know why, probably becuase I have put in a number of late nights and early mornings.
I'll try to write something amusing tomorrow.
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Coveted Victim Status
or (CVS). Usually something I associate with majorities who use CVS to advocate for more benefits to cement their majority (e.g. Catholics, Republicans, Creationists, the Mentally Retarted). However, it seems folks don't much like athesits.
50% of Americans have an unfavorable view of people whose great sin, as best I can tell, is that they refuse to take on faith what others are willing to take on faith. I'm pleased that hostility to Jews and Catholics seems to be much less than what it used to be in the past. I hope the same will soon happen as to Muslim Americans and Evangelical Christians; that one may disagree with some Evangelical Christians' political agenda, for instance, is surely no reason to view them unfavorably as people (just as one's disagreement with most American Jews' liberalism is no reason for viewing them unfavorably). Yet the high level of disapproval of atheists should make us worry about American religious harmony and tolerance more broadly.
This does not surprise me in the least. No one likes a smart ass, especially ones who quietly believe your belief in the invisible is some kind of mental disorder. Even if it's not said, that's what most people think atheists think about them. And they resent it.
Yet, fundamentally, there is no way around the problem. Except for this blog, I am generally not evangelical about my unchurchedness (and the exception is here because no one is forcing you read this stuff. You can tune in for just the funny bits). Atheists are almost always perceived by believers as being judgmental about their choices. The irony in this is extraordinary and inconsistent, but it's definitely true.
Hence, the one group who least values CVS, has a better claim than most MSRs.
50% of Americans have an unfavorable view of people whose great sin, as best I can tell, is that they refuse to take on faith what others are willing to take on faith. I'm pleased that hostility to Jews and Catholics seems to be much less than what it used to be in the past. I hope the same will soon happen as to Muslim Americans and Evangelical Christians; that one may disagree with some Evangelical Christians' political agenda, for instance, is surely no reason to view them unfavorably as people (just as one's disagreement with most American Jews' liberalism is no reason for viewing them unfavorably). Yet the high level of disapproval of atheists should make us worry about American religious harmony and tolerance more broadly.
This does not surprise me in the least. No one likes a smart ass, especially ones who quietly believe your belief in the invisible is some kind of mental disorder. Even if it's not said, that's what most people think atheists think about them. And they resent it.
Yet, fundamentally, there is no way around the problem. Except for this blog, I am generally not evangelical about my unchurchedness (and the exception is here because no one is forcing you read this stuff. You can tune in for just the funny bits). Atheists are almost always perceived by believers as being judgmental about their choices. The irony in this is extraordinary and inconsistent, but it's definitely true.
Hence, the one group who least values CVS, has a better claim than most MSRs.
KABURA
The new RX-7 replacement from Mazda??
I know now what I'll be squandering the boy's tuition on instead of Drexel next year...
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Bing
This is a description of Stephen Bing, first in the LA Times and now (allegedly) in an RNC memo on MoveOn.org:
Bing, Who Enjoys Strip Clubs And Las Vegas Casinos, Lives In Two-Bedroom Bel-Air Home But Bought Seven Adjoining Houses With Plan Of Demolishing Them To Create “Palatial Grounds.†“A determined bachelor, he lives in a small two-bedroom home in Bel-Air but has bought the seven adjoining houses with the intention of knocking them down and creating palatial grounds. He’s a fan of strip clubs, has been a high roller in Las Vegas for years, and yet he can discuss the dense Robert Caro biography of Lyndon Johnson.â
OMG! He can discuss a book!
An actual book!
The horror!
NOW I want to meet this guy.
Bing, Who Enjoys Strip Clubs And Las Vegas Casinos, Lives In Two-Bedroom Bel-Air Home But Bought Seven Adjoining Houses With Plan Of Demolishing Them To Create “Palatial Grounds.†“A determined bachelor, he lives in a small two-bedroom home in Bel-Air but has bought the seven adjoining houses with the intention of knocking them down and creating palatial grounds. He’s a fan of strip clubs, has been a high roller in Las Vegas for years, and yet he can discuss the dense Robert Caro biography of Lyndon Johnson.â
OMG! He can discuss a book!
An actual book!
The horror!
NOW I want to meet this guy.
Gold
An interesting short essay on why the price of gold is currently through the roof.
Alan Greenspan knows all this. Before he became an integral part of the nanny state's machine, he wrote the following in a 1966 essay titled "Gold and Economic Freedom":
In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold. If everyone decided, for example, to convert all his bank deposits to silver or copper or any other good, and thereafter declined to accept checks as payment for goods, bank deposits would lose their purchasing power and government-created bank credit would be worthless as a claim on goods. The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves.
This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard.
Essentially, Greenspan's point is that gold enforces consequences. That's why Nixon officially decoupled the dollar from gold in the early 1970's; as the U.S. printed excess money to pay the debts from the Vietnam War, it sought to disguise the consequences. Greenspan refers above to the government making the holding of gold illegal. In 1933, Roosevelt outlawed the ownership of gold by U.S. citizens as the government tried to remove any constraint on its ability to reflate during the Great Depression (history buffs can view a copy of FDR's executive order here).
The essay also contains a truism I've heard from a number of traders:
"All of economic history is one lie and deceit after another. Your job as a speculator is to get on when the lie is being propagated and then get off before it is discovered."
Alan Greenspan knows all this. Before he became an integral part of the nanny state's machine, he wrote the following in a 1966 essay titled "Gold and Economic Freedom":
In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold. If everyone decided, for example, to convert all his bank deposits to silver or copper or any other good, and thereafter declined to accept checks as payment for goods, bank deposits would lose their purchasing power and government-created bank credit would be worthless as a claim on goods. The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves.
This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard.
Essentially, Greenspan's point is that gold enforces consequences. That's why Nixon officially decoupled the dollar from gold in the early 1970's; as the U.S. printed excess money to pay the debts from the Vietnam War, it sought to disguise the consequences. Greenspan refers above to the government making the holding of gold illegal. In 1933, Roosevelt outlawed the ownership of gold by U.S. citizens as the government tried to remove any constraint on its ability to reflate during the Great Depression (history buffs can view a copy of FDR's executive order here).
The essay also contains a truism I've heard from a number of traders:
"All of economic history is one lie and deceit after another. Your job as a speculator is to get on when the lie is being propagated and then get off before it is discovered."
Monday, December 12, 2005
Thursday, December 08, 2005
Not Quite Responsible Disclosure
Microsoft puts a lot of effort into advocating and rewarding the process of Responsible Disclosure. RD allows folks who discover software vulnerabilities to share the information with the manufacturer and others in a way which maximizes the appropriate countermeasures are available before an exploit and minimizes risks to the community at large. When done correctly, the process allows everyone to benefit by coordinating the availability of a patch, fix or workaround, with the disclosure of the vulnerability. The discoverer is always fully credited with the effort, which is almost always the goal for security researchers.
One way not to do RD is to email, post or blog the details of the vulnerability before a fix has been established, as it puts everyone at risk.
Another way not to do it is to post the vulnerability on eBay.
Sigh.
One way not to do RD is to email, post or blog the details of the vulnerability before a fix has been established, as it puts everyone at risk.
Another way not to do it is to post the vulnerability on eBay.
Sigh.
Incompetent Design
Frankly, I've been wondering about why no one has said this for so long, I've thought about writing it myself.
Don Wise, professor emeritus of geosciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, is the nation's foremost proponent of ID. No, Wise isn't getting ready to testify on behalf of the school board in Dover, PA. Rather, he advocates for a different version of the acronym: "incompetent design."
Wise cites serious flaws in the systems of the human body as evidence that design in the universe exhibits not an obvious source of, but a sore lack of, intelligence. Seed asked him to chat about his theory, reactions he's received to it, and the anthem he penned to rally people to his cause.
The thing that perhaps is closest to all of us is our own skeleton, and there are certainly all kinds of stupidity in our design. No self-respecting engineering student would make the kinds of dumb mistakes that are built into us. All of our pelvises slope forward for convenient knuckle-dragging, like all the other great apes. And the only reason you stand erect is because of this incredible sharp bend at the base of your spine, which is either evolution's way of modifying something or else it's just a design that would flunk a first-year engineering student.
Look at the teeth in your mouth. Basically, most of us have too many teeth for the size of our mouth. Well, is this evolution flattening a mammalian muzzle and jamming it into a face or is it a design that couldn't count accurately above 20? Look at the bones in your face. They're the same as the other mammals' but they're just squashed and contorted by jamming the jaw into a face with your brain expanding over it, so the potential drainage system in there is so convoluted that no plumber would admit to having done it!
Don Wise, professor emeritus of geosciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, is the nation's foremost proponent of ID. No, Wise isn't getting ready to testify on behalf of the school board in Dover, PA. Rather, he advocates for a different version of the acronym: "incompetent design."
Wise cites serious flaws in the systems of the human body as evidence that design in the universe exhibits not an obvious source of, but a sore lack of, intelligence. Seed asked him to chat about his theory, reactions he's received to it, and the anthem he penned to rally people to his cause.
The thing that perhaps is closest to all of us is our own skeleton, and there are certainly all kinds of stupidity in our design. No self-respecting engineering student would make the kinds of dumb mistakes that are built into us. All of our pelvises slope forward for convenient knuckle-dragging, like all the other great apes. And the only reason you stand erect is because of this incredible sharp bend at the base of your spine, which is either evolution's way of modifying something or else it's just a design that would flunk a first-year engineering student.
Look at the teeth in your mouth. Basically, most of us have too many teeth for the size of our mouth. Well, is this evolution flattening a mammalian muzzle and jamming it into a face or is it a design that couldn't count accurately above 20? Look at the bones in your face. They're the same as the other mammals' but they're just squashed and contorted by jamming the jaw into a face with your brain expanding over it, so the potential drainage system in there is so convoluted that no plumber would admit to having done it!
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the
time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He
also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet,
he suffered from bad breath. This made him .(Oh, man, this is so bad,
it's good).... A super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.
Okay, frist of all, this was sent TO me, I did not make it up.
Second, well, ummm.. well... pound for pound puns are your best entertainment value.
time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He
also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet,
he suffered from bad breath. This made him .(Oh, man, this is so bad,
it's good).... A super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.
Okay, frist of all, this was sent TO me, I did not make it up.
Second, well, ummm.. well... pound for pound puns are your best entertainment value.
The Problem with Science
Nicholas Kristof has an excellent column today on the NYT page about the culture of humanities and problem that most people aren't familiar enough with science to understand what it's doing in and to the world.
But put aside the evolution debate for a moment. It's only a symptom of something much deeper and more serious: a profound illiteracy about science and math as a whole.
One-fifth of Americans still believe that the Sun goes around the Earth, instead of the other way around. And only about half know that humans did not live at the same time as dinosaurs.
The problem isn't just inadequate science (and math) teaching in the schools, however. A larger problem is the arrogance of the liberal arts, the cultural snootiness of, of ... well, of people like me - and probably you.
What do I mean by that? In the U.S. and most of the Western world, it's considered barbaric in educated circles to be unfamiliar with Plato or Monet or Dickens, but quite natural to be oblivious of quarks and chi-squares. A century ago, Einstein published his first paper on relativity - making 1905 as important a milestone for world history as 1066 or 1789 - but relativity has yet to filter into the consciousness of otherwise educated people.
"The great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the Western world have about as much insight into it as their neolithic ancestors would have had," C. P. Snow wrote in his classic essay, "The Two Cultures."
The counterargument is that we can always hire technicians in Bangalore, while it's Shakespeare and Goethe who teach us the values we need to harness science for humanity. There's something to that. If President Bush were about to attack Iraq all over again, he would be better off reading Sophocles - to appreciate the dangers of hubris - than studying the science of explosives.
But put aside the evolution debate for a moment. It's only a symptom of something much deeper and more serious: a profound illiteracy about science and math as a whole.
One-fifth of Americans still believe that the Sun goes around the Earth, instead of the other way around. And only about half know that humans did not live at the same time as dinosaurs.
The problem isn't just inadequate science (and math) teaching in the schools, however. A larger problem is the arrogance of the liberal arts, the cultural snootiness of, of ... well, of people like me - and probably you.
What do I mean by that? In the U.S. and most of the Western world, it's considered barbaric in educated circles to be unfamiliar with Plato or Monet or Dickens, but quite natural to be oblivious of quarks and chi-squares. A century ago, Einstein published his first paper on relativity - making 1905 as important a milestone for world history as 1066 or 1789 - but relativity has yet to filter into the consciousness of otherwise educated people.
"The great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the Western world have about as much insight into it as their neolithic ancestors would have had," C. P. Snow wrote in his classic essay, "The Two Cultures."
The counterargument is that we can always hire technicians in Bangalore, while it's Shakespeare and Goethe who teach us the values we need to harness science for humanity. There's something to that. If President Bush were about to attack Iraq all over again, he would be better off reading Sophocles - to appreciate the dangers of hubris - than studying the science of explosives.
Monday, December 05, 2005
Saturday, December 03, 2005
Swap Your Bible For ... (wait for it) ...
Porn!
I love the Wonkette, I really do.
An atheist student group in Texas has set up shop on their campus offering to exchange porn for Bibles. A religious type was predictably offended: "In my opinion, there are no atheists. There are fools."And you shall know them by hair on their palms. Except the real fools are folks not LINING UP for this great offer. So far, they've only given away five skin mags. We think the reaction would be different in D.C. Though, it's true, Clarence Thomas would argue that shouldn't have to choose.
Porno for Bibles [Atheist Agenda via Boing Boing]Group Collects Bibles, Passes Out Porn [WOAI]
I love the Wonkette, I really do.
An atheist student group in Texas has set up shop on their campus offering to exchange porn for Bibles. A religious type was predictably offended: "In my opinion, there are no atheists. There are fools."And you shall know them by hair on their palms. Except the real fools are folks not LINING UP for this great offer. So far, they've only given away five skin mags. We think the reaction would be different in D.C. Though, it's true, Clarence Thomas would argue that shouldn't have to choose.
Porno for Bibles [Atheist Agenda via Boing Boing]Group Collects Bibles, Passes Out Porn [WOAI]
Friday, December 02, 2005
A Decent Comment About Economics
I was reading about a particularly egregious abuse of statistics and followed a thread to here, which had an interesting comment:
I know a guy in my dorm, a pro-PATRIOT Act "classical liberal" who used to want to be an economics major. He was turned off by the fact that it involved a bunch of min/maxing, rather than waxing on eloquently about the perfection and beauty of the free market. And really, who doesn't get sick, on occasion, of undergrad econ courses with their endless Lagrangian multipliers and simple partial derivatives? I think what angered him more, though, was that it treats economics as an empirically falsifiable science (Not well, some might claim (is John Emerson around?), with perhaps excessively high standards for falsification of favored models, but at least in theory). This guy didn't want there to be any chinks in the armor of the free market. To him, this isn't an empirical issue at all: it's a moral one. I respect that, actually, but the problem is when these people demand that economics the empirical social science meet free market libertarianism the moral position. When the two clash, the strategy is to take "the free market is perfect" as a null hypothesis, and then set a standard for falsification above whatever evidence supports an alternative hypothesis.
Two comments:
1) I've had this particular conversation.
2) Lagrangian multipliers huh? I may have underestimated parts of modern economics.
I know a guy in my dorm, a pro-PATRIOT Act "classical liberal" who used to want to be an economics major. He was turned off by the fact that it involved a bunch of min/maxing, rather than waxing on eloquently about the perfection and beauty of the free market. And really, who doesn't get sick, on occasion, of undergrad econ courses with their endless Lagrangian multipliers and simple partial derivatives? I think what angered him more, though, was that it treats economics as an empirically falsifiable science (Not well, some might claim (is John Emerson around?), with perhaps excessively high standards for falsification of favored models, but at least in theory). This guy didn't want there to be any chinks in the armor of the free market. To him, this isn't an empirical issue at all: it's a moral one. I respect that, actually, but the problem is when these people demand that economics the empirical social science meet free market libertarianism the moral position. When the two clash, the strategy is to take "the free market is perfect" as a null hypothesis, and then set a standard for falsification above whatever evidence supports an alternative hypothesis.
Two comments:
1) I've had this particular conversation.
2) Lagrangian multipliers huh? I may have underestimated parts of modern economics.
Dr. Doctor
I'm being sent to a neurologist at the University of Washington who is also "the best diagnositican in the state", Phil Swanson, M.D., Ph.D.
Hopefully I will be "boring".
Hopefully I will be "boring".
Thursday, December 01, 2005
What's the Difference Between an Astronomer and an Astrophysicst?
Given the below rant, I know someone is going to ask because I tend to use the terms interchangeably.
Technically there isn't much of a real difference, it just tends to be how you self-identify. Is it Radio Astronomy, Radio Astrophysics or Gas-Phase Quantum Chemistry? It depends on how you went through your career. A loose rule of thumb tends to be, if you're looking at it, it's astronomy, if it involves a lot of math and not many observations, it's astrophysics. However, I can't think of an example where this comes down one way more than the other. This may be my lack of imagination.
Here's a better way of demonstrating the difference:
If you walk into a bar and you feel cranky and want to be left alone while someone is trying to chat you up, tell them you are an "astrophysicist". The conversation sill stop, you will get a look like you just might be an escaped mental patient (maybe a violent one) and you will be left alone. If you do it right, you may not even be served any more.
However, if you are in a cheerful mood and feeling gregarious, tell people you are an "astronomer". People will ask you all sorts of questions, talk to you, buy you drinks and occasionally, beautiful members of the opposite sex will come up and start kissing you at random (this has happened twice to me, and yes there are witnesses).
That's the difference.
Technically there isn't much of a real difference, it just tends to be how you self-identify. Is it Radio Astronomy, Radio Astrophysics or Gas-Phase Quantum Chemistry? It depends on how you went through your career. A loose rule of thumb tends to be, if you're looking at it, it's astronomy, if it involves a lot of math and not many observations, it's astrophysics. However, I can't think of an example where this comes down one way more than the other. This may be my lack of imagination.
Here's a better way of demonstrating the difference:
If you walk into a bar and you feel cranky and want to be left alone while someone is trying to chat you up, tell them you are an "astrophysicist". The conversation sill stop, you will get a look like you just might be an escaped mental patient (maybe a violent one) and you will be left alone. If you do it right, you may not even be served any more.
However, if you are in a cheerful mood and feeling gregarious, tell people you are an "astronomer". People will ask you all sorts of questions, talk to you, buy you drinks and occasionally, beautiful members of the opposite sex will come up and start kissing you at random (this has happened twice to me, and yes there are witnesses).
That's the difference.
How to Be An Astronomer
I was asked the following question this afternoon by a reader (edited):
My niece is a junior in high school. She gets all A's, is an athlete, member of NHS, has a job, great citizen, etc. She wants to study astrophysics and work for NASA and thinks that going into the Air Force is a great way to get into NASA. Would you lend her some insight about avenues to NASA, whether it is the best place to be, the best schools to shoot for, etc.?
Truthfully? Going into the Air Force will all but exclude her from a career in astrophysics, especially if she goes in now. While she’s in the AF not learning to fly jets (almost no one gets to fly jets, but everyone wants to), others are in college getting a science education and getting ready for grad school. While it's true that a lot astronauts are from the military right now, they are generally on the pilot side or are "mission specialists" who started their careers as astronomers and later joined the military. All other considerations aside (and I have become relatively neutral on the question of joining the military since Geoff is so insistent on it), that really isn't a good way to become an astrophysicist. Even with service delayed until after college, there are too many competing pressures and, physics is hard. Very hard. Lots of Sci-Fi lovers think they know some physics. Very very few of them make it to the level of astrophysicist. You're going to need all your concentration even if you are exceptionally gifted. Stargate SG-1 aside, focus on the science. The Air Force doesn't really have a program directed toward cranking out astronomers. Heck, most universities don't have astronomy programs, and it's a tough slog.
How to become an astrophysicist:
1) Go to a university and take every math and physics course that comes your way. Take astronomy if they offer it, but if they don’t, then don’t worry too much. They are going to judge you on your physics abilities. You'll need all of them. Astronomers are science generalists, especially in the beginning. The good news, you don’t have to get *all* As. It helps, but basically you want to get good grades and do some undergrad research with a professor your junior and senior years. The prof is the one who is going to write your letters of recommendation for grad school, and the whole point is to go to grad school.
At the end of university you need:
A GPA >= pi
2 or more letters of recommendation from professors
If possible an undergrad thesis
A Physics GRE >= 50%
If nothing else, if you go to a hippie school and make MDMA for 4 years and have no grades, you must slam the GRE. Your Physics GRE score is approximately equal to your % chance of being accepted for grad school at a decent place. The University of Toledo is not a decent place (although they accepted me *over the phone* when they got my GRE score). The letters from the profs and the GPA are your backups in case you pull a 40%. If you get in the 20s… well.. chances are you won’t *want* grad school.
2) Pick your grad school with care. Use the Guide to Physics and Astronomy Graduate Schools to pick yours. By the end of my senior year I had mine memorized. You need to pick a school that has a specialty you are interested in. High Energy Astrophysics? Penn State. Radio Astronomy? UMass, Uof Arizona. GR and gravity? John Hopkins or USC or CalTech. Picking the wrong grad school will mean a high likelihood of washing out second year. The drop rate of 2nd years is 50%
3) Pass your PhD quals and pick a thesis. The washout rate for this step if 50% of those that survived step 2
4) Write your thesis, defend it, get it published. The washout rate from here is also 50% of the remainder.
5) Pay your graduation fees or people will get cranky with you. :)
6) Pick a postdoctoral job. You will have a specialty now and are ready to work. It’s hard to get a postdoc but somehow there always seems to be exactly 1 for each new graduate. It’s a little weird but it works.
7) If you have made it this far, you are in a rare strata of life. There is exactly one astronomer for every 1,000,000 people on the planet. Congrats. By this point you know the other 5,999 astronomers and they know you. Too much about you!
8) Shut up Spitzak
Now you are ready to join the Air Force. You’ve got something to really contribute and, if you’re in good shape, you have a decent shot a shuttle mission if you want one. By decent shot I mean 1:950 or so. Given that you are already 1:1,000,000 that should be a walk in the park. J You are ready to be a mission specialist.
Don’t want a shuttle mission? At this point NASA is calling *you*. More or less. It depends a little on what you did in step 3) but even the Galactic Photometrists get funding from NASA or NSF, so you’re in a good spot. Don’t want to work for NASA? Well, you can teach, go into research, sell out and work in financial services. Pretty much anything you want. You’ve mastered some of the hardest knowledge mankind has (unless you picked Galactic Photometry back in step 3. Maybe it’s best you don’t pick that.) Want you own satellite? It’s likely at this point that’s what you are doing. In my graduate class of 6 people, 2 have their own satellites. (2 of us work in non-astronomy and 2 are in research).
I’m not down on the Air Force, BTW. It’s possible I will get some blog comments here from astronomers who came up through the AF and I invite their stories. I don’t know any of you and I’ve never heard of anyone doing that successfully, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. It just hasn’t been my experience. I think there are a lot of great careers to be had coming in through the AF, I just haven't heard of anyone becoming an astronomer that way.
My niece is a junior in high school. She gets all A's, is an athlete, member of NHS, has a job, great citizen, etc. She wants to study astrophysics and work for NASA and thinks that going into the Air Force is a great way to get into NASA. Would you lend her some insight about avenues to NASA, whether it is the best place to be, the best schools to shoot for, etc.?
Truthfully? Going into the Air Force will all but exclude her from a career in astrophysics, especially if she goes in now. While she’s in the AF not learning to fly jets (almost no one gets to fly jets, but everyone wants to), others are in college getting a science education and getting ready for grad school. While it's true that a lot astronauts are from the military right now, they are generally on the pilot side or are "mission specialists" who started their careers as astronomers and later joined the military. All other considerations aside (and I have become relatively neutral on the question of joining the military since Geoff is so insistent on it), that really isn't a good way to become an astrophysicist. Even with service delayed until after college, there are too many competing pressures and, physics is hard. Very hard. Lots of Sci-Fi lovers think they know some physics. Very very few of them make it to the level of astrophysicist. You're going to need all your concentration even if you are exceptionally gifted. Stargate SG-1 aside, focus on the science. The Air Force doesn't really have a program directed toward cranking out astronomers. Heck, most universities don't have astronomy programs, and it's a tough slog.
How to become an astrophysicist:
1) Go to a university and take every math and physics course that comes your way. Take astronomy if they offer it, but if they don’t, then don’t worry too much. They are going to judge you on your physics abilities. You'll need all of them. Astronomers are science generalists, especially in the beginning. The good news, you don’t have to get *all* As. It helps, but basically you want to get good grades and do some undergrad research with a professor your junior and senior years. The prof is the one who is going to write your letters of recommendation for grad school, and the whole point is to go to grad school.
At the end of university you need:
A GPA >= pi
2 or more letters of recommendation from professors
If possible an undergrad thesis
A Physics GRE >= 50%
If nothing else, if you go to a hippie school and make MDMA for 4 years and have no grades, you must slam the GRE. Your Physics GRE score is approximately equal to your % chance of being accepted for grad school at a decent place. The University of Toledo is not a decent place (although they accepted me *over the phone* when they got my GRE score). The letters from the profs and the GPA are your backups in case you pull a 40%. If you get in the 20s… well.. chances are you won’t *want* grad school.
2) Pick your grad school with care. Use the Guide to Physics and Astronomy Graduate Schools to pick yours. By the end of my senior year I had mine memorized. You need to pick a school that has a specialty you are interested in. High Energy Astrophysics? Penn State. Radio Astronomy? UMass, Uof Arizona. GR and gravity? John Hopkins or USC or CalTech. Picking the wrong grad school will mean a high likelihood of washing out second year. The drop rate of 2nd years is 50%
3) Pass your PhD quals and pick a thesis. The washout rate for this step if 50% of those that survived step 2
4) Write your thesis, defend it, get it published. The washout rate from here is also 50% of the remainder.
5) Pay your graduation fees or people will get cranky with you. :)
6) Pick a postdoctoral job. You will have a specialty now and are ready to work. It’s hard to get a postdoc but somehow there always seems to be exactly 1 for each new graduate. It’s a little weird but it works.
7) If you have made it this far, you are in a rare strata of life. There is exactly one astronomer for every 1,000,000 people on the planet. Congrats. By this point you know the other 5,999 astronomers and they know you. Too much about you!
8) Shut up Spitzak
Now you are ready to join the Air Force. You’ve got something to really contribute and, if you’re in good shape, you have a decent shot a shuttle mission if you want one. By decent shot I mean 1:950 or so. Given that you are already 1:1,000,000 that should be a walk in the park. J You are ready to be a mission specialist.
Don’t want a shuttle mission? At this point NASA is calling *you*. More or less. It depends a little on what you did in step 3) but even the Galactic Photometrists get funding from NASA or NSF, so you’re in a good spot. Don’t want to work for NASA? Well, you can teach, go into research, sell out and work in financial services. Pretty much anything you want. You’ve mastered some of the hardest knowledge mankind has (unless you picked Galactic Photometry back in step 3. Maybe it’s best you don’t pick that.) Want you own satellite? It’s likely at this point that’s what you are doing. In my graduate class of 6 people, 2 have their own satellites. (2 of us work in non-astronomy and 2 are in research).
I’m not down on the Air Force, BTW. It’s possible I will get some blog comments here from astronomers who came up through the AF and I invite their stories. I don’t know any of you and I’ve never heard of anyone doing that successfully, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. It just hasn’t been my experience. I think there are a lot of great careers to be had coming in through the AF, I just haven't heard of anyone becoming an astronomer that way.
Toy Presidents
Verbatum:
Geoff:
Some of the faces made me laugh rather loudly at work. And by some I mean
Clinton: He looks emaciated (2nd ed) and muppet-ish (1st ed)
HW Bush: He looks kind of like Dole...
Eisenhower: I had to click on it to make sure he wasnt wearing a robe over his suit. He wasnt, but the idea is still funny.
FDR: Looks more like the guy who played the President in Clear and Present Danger
Wilson: Need I say more
Hillary Clinton, more like Hilarity Clinton
The head of that Pope John Paul II will haunt my dreams and nightmares for eternity
Dad:
I think they did a good job of hiding Nixon's horns.
Although you can still see the 666 birthmark on his left ear.
http://www.toypresident.com/collection.asp
Geoff:
Some of the faces made me laugh rather loudly at work. And by some I mean
Clinton: He looks emaciated (2nd ed) and muppet-ish (1st ed)
HW Bush: He looks kind of like Dole...
Eisenhower: I had to click on it to make sure he wasnt wearing a robe over his suit. He wasnt, but the idea is still funny.
FDR: Looks more like the guy who played the President in Clear and Present Danger
Wilson: Need I say more
Hillary Clinton, more like Hilarity Clinton
The head of that Pope John Paul II will haunt my dreams and nightmares for eternity
Dad:
I think they did a good job of hiding Nixon's horns.
Although you can still see the 666 birthmark on his left ear.
http://www.toypresident.com/collection.asp
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Fractal Self-Parody
I'm not even sure where to begin with this one. So many choices. Nothing I can say will add to the obvious. Even the study group is hilarious:
Nettle and his colleague Helen Clegg questioned 425 British men and women, including professional artists, poets and schizophrenic patients, about their creative activity, sexual encounters and mental health characteristics.
Creativity Linked to Sexual Promiscuity
Nettle and his colleague Helen Clegg questioned 425 British men and women, including professional artists, poets and schizophrenic patients, about their creative activity, sexual encounters and mental health characteristics.
Creativity Linked to Sexual Promiscuity
Something Geoff Said
Sometime back, in a discussion about military service, Geoff pointed out that he and I have different ideas about what a soldiers primary duty is supposed to be:
Mark: to obey
Geoff: to help
Since then, I've liked his idea better (although I still think I am, unfortunately, correct). Andrew Sullivan and others reported this exchange, which to me neatly illustrated the two points of view and highlights the moral superiority of Geofferey's position.
Q: And General Pace, what guidance do you have for your military commanders over there as to what to do if -- like when General Horst found this Interior Ministry jail [where evidenceof toeture was widespread]?
GEN. PACE: It is absolutely the responsibility of every U.S. service member, if they see inhumane treatment being conducted, to intervene to stop it. As an example of how to do it if you don't see it happening but you're told about it is exactly what happened a couple weeks ago. There's a report from an Iraqi to a U.S. commander that there was possibility of inhumane treatment in a particular facility. That U.S. commander got together with his Iraqi counterparts. They went together to the facility, found what they found, reported it to the Iraqi government, and the Iraqi government has taken ownership of that problem and is investigating it. So they did exactly what they should have done.
SEC. RUMSFELD: But I don't think you mean they have an obligation to physically stop it; it's to report it.
GEN. PACE: If they are physically present when inhumane treatment is taking place, sir, they have an obligation to try to stop it.
"reporting it" without an obligation to stop it is a) just ass-covering, b) tacit approval and c) wrong.
At least in my godless moral framework.
Mark: to obey
Geoff: to help
Since then, I've liked his idea better (although I still think I am, unfortunately, correct). Andrew Sullivan and others reported this exchange, which to me neatly illustrated the two points of view and highlights the moral superiority of Geofferey's position.
Q: And General Pace, what guidance do you have for your military commanders over there as to what to do if -- like when General Horst found this Interior Ministry jail [where evidenceof toeture was widespread]?
GEN. PACE: It is absolutely the responsibility of every U.S. service member, if they see inhumane treatment being conducted, to intervene to stop it. As an example of how to do it if you don't see it happening but you're told about it is exactly what happened a couple weeks ago. There's a report from an Iraqi to a U.S. commander that there was possibility of inhumane treatment in a particular facility. That U.S. commander got together with his Iraqi counterparts. They went together to the facility, found what they found, reported it to the Iraqi government, and the Iraqi government has taken ownership of that problem and is investigating it. So they did exactly what they should have done.
SEC. RUMSFELD: But I don't think you mean they have an obligation to physically stop it; it's to report it.
GEN. PACE: If they are physically present when inhumane treatment is taking place, sir, they have an obligation to try to stop it.
"reporting it" without an obligation to stop it is a) just ass-covering, b) tacit approval and c) wrong.
At least in my godless moral framework.
Tropical Storm Epsilon
Jesus McFuck.
At 11 a.m., the center of Tropical Storm Epsilon was about 650 miles east of Bermuda and moving closer at a rate of 9 miles per hour. Forecasters at the National Hurricane Center expect it to stay well off the coast, though it will continue sending heavy surf and rough waves around the island as it rakes the ocean with tropical-storm-force winds 225 miles from its center.
At 11 a.m., the center of Tropical Storm Epsilon was about 650 miles east of Bermuda and moving closer at a rate of 9 miles per hour. Forecasters at the National Hurricane Center expect it to stay well off the coast, though it will continue sending heavy surf and rough waves around the island as it rakes the ocean with tropical-storm-force winds 225 miles from its center.
Priceless Memorandum
Halfway through a very boring memo, someone stuck in this one, just to see if anyone read this far into it:
"Would you rather not hear more rhetorical questions?"
"Would you rather not hear more rhetorical questions?"
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Science?
I this link over at National Review, but it's not more apologia, its a patent on an ... unusual method of propulsion.
A space vehicle propelled by the pressure of inflationary vacuum state is provided comprising a hollow superconductive shield, an inner shield, a power source, a support structure, upper and lower means for generating an electromagnetic field, and a flux modulation controller. A cooled hollow superconductive shield is energized by an electromagnetic field resulting in the quantized vortices of lattice ions projecting a gravitomagnetic field that forms a spacetime curvature anomaly outside the space vehicle. The spacetime curvature imbalance, the spacetime curvature being the same as gravity, provides for the space vehicle's propulsion. The space vehicle, surrounded by the spacetime anomaly, may move at a speed approaching the light-speed characteristic for the modified locale.
Now I've seem all kinds of crazy patents. When I was in charge of CertCo's protfolio of crypto patents, I had full access to the US Patent office and a staff of Steptoe and Johnson lawyers to bounce ideas off of. One of my favorites was a "device" that provided instantaneous communication by using the "extradimensional properties" of a hot magnet.
and it got a patent!
This one is a little harder to debunk. One link I expected to see in the references was one to something called the Tademaru-Harrison Effect, which causes neutron stars to propel themselves out of hte galaxy via an asymmetric magnetic dipole moment. It's not dissimilar to what this guy is proposing.
(I know it well because I had both Tademaru and Harrison as professors at UMass. Harrison is the same Harrison whom I often quote about democracy. Also Tademaru asked a question on the qualifying exam about it. I got a 2/10 on that problem which, ironically, was the highest score on that problem in almost 2 decades.)
He uses a lot unproven assumptions in his explaination (e.g. the cosmological constant) which, while not science, is fine for a patent. Patents don't care that much how it works or even that it works. It's the fundemental difference between science and technology. Patents are all about technology.
I need to spend some time thinking about this one.
A space vehicle propelled by the pressure of inflationary vacuum state is provided comprising a hollow superconductive shield, an inner shield, a power source, a support structure, upper and lower means for generating an electromagnetic field, and a flux modulation controller. A cooled hollow superconductive shield is energized by an electromagnetic field resulting in the quantized vortices of lattice ions projecting a gravitomagnetic field that forms a spacetime curvature anomaly outside the space vehicle. The spacetime curvature imbalance, the spacetime curvature being the same as gravity, provides for the space vehicle's propulsion. The space vehicle, surrounded by the spacetime anomaly, may move at a speed approaching the light-speed characteristic for the modified locale.
Now I've seem all kinds of crazy patents. When I was in charge of CertCo's protfolio of crypto patents, I had full access to the US Patent office and a staff of Steptoe and Johnson lawyers to bounce ideas off of. One of my favorites was a "device" that provided instantaneous communication by using the "extradimensional properties" of a hot magnet.
and it got a patent!
This one is a little harder to debunk. One link I expected to see in the references was one to something called the Tademaru-Harrison Effect, which causes neutron stars to propel themselves out of hte galaxy via an asymmetric magnetic dipole moment. It's not dissimilar to what this guy is proposing.
(I know it well because I had both Tademaru and Harrison as professors at UMass. Harrison is the same Harrison whom I often quote about democracy. Also Tademaru asked a question on the qualifying exam about it. I got a 2/10 on that problem which, ironically, was the highest score on that problem in almost 2 decades.)
He uses a lot unproven assumptions in his explaination (e.g. the cosmological constant) which, while not science, is fine for a patent. Patents don't care that much how it works or even that it works. It's the fundemental difference between science and technology. Patents are all about technology.
I need to spend some time thinking about this one.
Venture Brothers Update
Some good news for fans of the Venture Brothers:
We're currently finishing up the tenth script of the season
Ben Edlund is supposed to turn in the eleventh script of the season in this coming week
Ben Edlund is the creator of The Tick! one of my all-time favorite comics/shows/mental-breakdowns.
The color department kicked into gear about a month and a half ago and are blowing me away. They're currently working on the third episode...
ut-oh! 3rd episode??? I was hoping for some eps by Christmas! oh well, looks like the Spring.
For anyone who is new and doesn't know what I'm talking about, the Venture Brothers is the funniest show ever made. At least if you're an aging, 70's cartoon watching person of dry wit and a sense of the absurd.
Otherwise it's probably just ... strange.
Here is a test, read the following line out loud in your best villian voice:
"While you were castrating that priceless antiquity, I was feeding babies to hungry mutated puppies! Bwaaahahahahahahaha"
Did you laugh? If so, watch the show if not...
I just did this and have been asked to close the door to my office by my neighbor across the hall. She was not laughing.
She probably has a baboon's uterus.
We're currently finishing up the tenth script of the season
Ben Edlund is supposed to turn in the eleventh script of the season in this coming week
Ben Edlund is the creator of The Tick! one of my all-time favorite comics/shows/mental-breakdowns.
The color department kicked into gear about a month and a half ago and are blowing me away. They're currently working on the third episode...
ut-oh! 3rd episode??? I was hoping for some eps by Christmas! oh well, looks like the Spring.
For anyone who is new and doesn't know what I'm talking about, the Venture Brothers is the funniest show ever made. At least if you're an aging, 70's cartoon watching person of dry wit and a sense of the absurd.
Otherwise it's probably just ... strange.
Here is a test, read the following line out loud in your best villian voice:
"While you were castrating that priceless antiquity, I was feeding babies to hungry mutated puppies! Bwaaahahahahahahaha"
Did you laugh? If so, watch the show if not...
I just did this and have been asked to close the door to my office by my neighbor across the hall. She was not laughing.
She probably has a baboon's uterus.
A Confession
I'm embarassed to admit this, but I feel I have no choice.
Sigh.
This is hard to type.
ok, here goes.
I've been reading Arianna Huffington's blog.
Worse, I'm starting to enjoy it.
Oh, it started off innocently enough, just following the occasional link from Andrew Sullivan or occasionally from Kos. Sometimes interesting things would be written there, but I could never escape the feeling that Arianna was behind it all and I would get the guilty feeling like I had just bought something in a plain, brown wrapper like Playboy, Oui or the Village Voice.
Today I jumped over there just to see what was doing on. Arianna made a point about Bob Woodward I had been thinking for 10 years now and I realized with horror that we agree on a lot.
I am scared!
Anyway, back to Bob Woodward:
I found myself thinking about Woodward and his barrel-searching as I read Frank Rich's latest takedown of the administration's cover up of "wrongdoing in the executive branch between 9/11 and shock and awe":
Each day brings slam-dunk evidence that the doomsday threats marshaled by the administration to sell the war weren't, in Cheney-speak, just dishonest and reprehensible but also corrupt and shameless... The web of half-truths and falsehoods used to sell the war did not happen by accident; it was woven by design and then foisted on the public by a P.R. operation built expressly for that purpose in the White House.
During this time, Woodward was writing two books on the administration -- Bush at War and Plan of Attack -- and enjoyed unparalleled access to many of those guiding the aforementioned P.R. operation, including head shills Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby, and Andy Card.
So how come Woodward, supposedly the preeminent investigative reporter of our time, missed the biggest story of our time -- a story that was taking place right under his nose?
Some would say it's because he's carrying water for the Bushies. I disagree. I think it's because he's the dumb blonde of American journalism, so awed by his proximity to power that he buys whatever he's being sold.
Sigh.
This is hard to type.
ok, here goes.
I've been reading Arianna Huffington's blog.
Worse, I'm starting to enjoy it.
Oh, it started off innocently enough, just following the occasional link from Andrew Sullivan or occasionally from Kos. Sometimes interesting things would be written there, but I could never escape the feeling that Arianna was behind it all and I would get the guilty feeling like I had just bought something in a plain, brown wrapper like Playboy, Oui or the Village Voice.
Today I jumped over there just to see what was doing on. Arianna made a point about Bob Woodward I had been thinking for 10 years now and I realized with horror that we agree on a lot.
I am scared!
Anyway, back to Bob Woodward:
I found myself thinking about Woodward and his barrel-searching as I read Frank Rich's latest takedown of the administration's cover up of "wrongdoing in the executive branch between 9/11 and shock and awe":
Each day brings slam-dunk evidence that the doomsday threats marshaled by the administration to sell the war weren't, in Cheney-speak, just dishonest and reprehensible but also corrupt and shameless... The web of half-truths and falsehoods used to sell the war did not happen by accident; it was woven by design and then foisted on the public by a P.R. operation built expressly for that purpose in the White House.
During this time, Woodward was writing two books on the administration -- Bush at War and Plan of Attack -- and enjoyed unparalleled access to many of those guiding the aforementioned P.R. operation, including head shills Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby, and Andy Card.
So how come Woodward, supposedly the preeminent investigative reporter of our time, missed the biggest story of our time -- a story that was taking place right under his nose?
Some would say it's because he's carrying water for the Bushies. I disagree. I think it's because he's the dumb blonde of American journalism, so awed by his proximity to power that he buys whatever he's being sold.
Happy Birthday Geoff
The Boy turns 20 today. His mother calls him at the time of his birth every year, 6:13am and reminds him, in detail, about the 29 hours of labor she had.
I'm content merely to publish his email address on my blog. That would be gch23@drexel.edu
Write to him and say Happy Birthday, even if you don't know him well.
I'm content merely to publish his email address on my blog. That would be gch23@drexel.edu
Write to him and say Happy Birthday, even if you don't know him well.
Monday, November 28, 2005
What happened at the MS clinic?
Thanks all for the notes. I guess going offline for a few days afterward left an information hole becuase I have received a lot of very generous notes the last few days. I wrote the following in response to one, once I got my head together. It covers the bases, and so I'm going to post it here. Again, thanks for your overwhelming support, I really do appreciate it.
What happened at the MS clinic? Below is a (very slight) paraphrase, but it reflects the conversation.
Short version (after the 90 minute exam):
Doc: While it's certainly possible you have MS, that's not my first impression. Also several signs argue against it.
Mark: like what?
Doc: You have no reflexes. Not diminished ones, just none. I can't raise a reflex at all, anywhere. It's weird.
Mark: It's that because of diabetes?
Doc: That's possible, but usually MS patients have exaggerated reflexes. The shorts in the spine cause hypersensitivty. You're the opposite, even with diabetes. Also, you NCV are not normal. Not nearly.
Mark: The Nerve conduction speeds? They told be 30 m/s was normal, if just barely.
Doc: No. 50 is normal. 30 is clearly compromised. It's also consistent with why you can't walk. The peripheral nerves are clearly damaged.
Mark: So it's not MS?
Doc: I didn't say that. It's defiantly a movement disorder though. We need another round of MRIs. BTW, your Wilson's hypothesis was clever. We should run the test. Let me check you for the Kayser-Fleischer ring.. Nope, but that's not conclusive.
Mark: Wait, I thought they ran that already.
Doc: No, but they did note you requested it. As I said, that was clever.
Mark: Thanks. I make a living being clever. What about Huntington's.
Doc: Also clever. And something we have to talk about.
Mark: Why?
Doc: I don't do Huntington's tests. I'm going to send you over to University of Washington for that. Dr. Ramii specializes in movement disorders and HD. He can handle it, but it will take several appointments and we won't get results until February.
Mark: I thought it was just as blood test. Is it as painful as the spinal tap?
Doc: No, it's a blood test. very simple. It's just that we handle them very sensitively. You'll need consoling no matter how it comes out.
Mark: why? Can't you just run it?
Doc: No.
Mark: Why not?
Doc: ... Because there is a significant suicide risk. Almost 6% of patients commit suicide within a year of getting a diagnosis.
Mark: Really???
Doc: Yes. Which reminds me. I'm also going to sign you up for a set of neuropsych evals.
Mark: I am NOT suicidal.
Doc: No, but you are having trouble remembering faces and names, get confused, have trouble concentrating, right?
Mark: Yes.
Doc: Neuropsych will figure out if it's real or if you're just getting old
Mark: or both!
Mark: So, looks like February until all this is done. What should I do in the meantime.
Doc: No meds until we know. I suggest a cane for now to help with your balance. Are you sure it's a balance problem and not just weakness?
Mark: It feels like I'm going to fall over, which seems like balance to me.
Doc:ok. Then yes, February.
Very short version:
February.
One quick Postscript, the doctor called me about an hour after I left his office:
Doc: I looked up Protonix in the PDR. You said you were taking that to supress the chocking fits right?
Mark: Yes. And it works! I'm not all that concer...
Doc: Ok. It turns out Protonix supresses reflexes.
Mark: oh!
Doc: We should run them again in 2 weeks once that stuff washes out of your system.
Mark: But I'll start choking again in a few days if I go off it. I've run the experiment accidently once or twice while traveling.
Doc: I'm going to prescribe Zanex. It should give the same effect but without neurological side effects.
Mark: cool!
What happened at the MS clinic? Below is a (very slight) paraphrase, but it reflects the conversation.
Short version (after the 90 minute exam):
Doc: While it's certainly possible you have MS, that's not my first impression. Also several signs argue against it.
Mark: like what?
Doc: You have no reflexes. Not diminished ones, just none. I can't raise a reflex at all, anywhere. It's weird.
Mark: It's that because of diabetes?
Doc: That's possible, but usually MS patients have exaggerated reflexes. The shorts in the spine cause hypersensitivty. You're the opposite, even with diabetes. Also, you NCV are not normal. Not nearly.
Mark: The Nerve conduction speeds? They told be 30 m/s was normal, if just barely.
Doc: No. 50 is normal. 30 is clearly compromised. It's also consistent with why you can't walk. The peripheral nerves are clearly damaged.
Mark: So it's not MS?
Doc: I didn't say that. It's defiantly a movement disorder though. We need another round of MRIs. BTW, your Wilson's hypothesis was clever. We should run the test. Let me check you for the Kayser-Fleischer ring.
Mark: Wait, I thought they ran that already.
Doc: No, but they did note you requested it. As I said, that was clever.
Mark: Thanks. I make a living being clever. What about Huntington's.
Doc: Also clever. And something we have to talk about.
Mark: Why?
Doc: I don't do Huntington's tests. I'm going to send you over to University of Washington for that. Dr. Ramii specializes in movement disorders and HD. He can handle it, but it will take several appointments and we won't get results until February.
Mark: I thought it was just as blood test. Is it as painful as the spinal tap?
Doc: No, it's a blood test. very simple. It's just that we handle them very sensitively. You'll need consoling no matter how it comes out.
Mark: why? Can't you just run it?
Doc: No.
Mark: Why not?
Doc: ... Because there is a significant suicide risk. Almost 6% of patients commit suicide within a year of getting a diagnosis.
Mark: Really???
Doc: Yes. Which reminds me. I'm also going to sign you up for a set of neuropsych evals.
Mark: I am NOT suicidal.
Doc: No, but you are having trouble remembering faces and names, get confused, have trouble concentrating, right?
Mark: Yes.
Doc: Neuropsych will figure out if it's real or if you're just getting old
Mark: or both!
Mark: So, looks like February until all this is done. What should I do in the meantime.
Doc: No meds until we know. I suggest a cane for now to help with your balance. Are you sure it's a balance problem and not just weakness?
Mark: It feels like I'm going to fall over, which seems like balance to me.
Doc:ok. Then yes, February.
Very short version:
February.
One quick Postscript, the doctor called me about an hour after I left his office:
Doc: I looked up Protonix in the PDR. You said you were taking that to supress the chocking fits right?
Mark: Yes. And it works! I'm not all that concer...
Doc: Ok. It turns out Protonix supresses reflexes.
Mark: oh!
Doc: We should run them again in 2 weeks once that stuff washes out of your system.
Mark: But I'll start choking again in a few days if I go off it. I've run the experiment accidently once or twice while traveling.
Doc: I'm going to prescribe Zanex. It should give the same effect but without neurological side effects.
Mark: cool!
Things That Are Not Physics
I was thrown off by the address. OTOH it's still, an interesting fairy tail.
The Book of Mormon makes the bold statement that Jesus Christ, shortly following His resurrection, visited people in the New World and invited them to "feel the prints of the nails in my hands and in my feet, that ye may know that I am...the God of the whole earth, and have been slain for the sins of the world. ... Ye are they of whom I said: Other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice..." (3 Nephi 11:14, 15:21). The Bible states that Jesus "showed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days" and that this witness of Christ would be "unto the uttermost part of the earth." (Acts 1:3-8) and that Jesus would indeed visit "other sheep" (John 10:16).
Okay, well maybe that's not his strong suit. Maybe it's Physics. Let's see.
Look, instructions on how to make a solar power mirror!
At 40 degrees latitude on a clear afternoon, water can boil in 1.5 hours. Also you can point the solar funnel towards the stars on a cloudless night to freeze your pot overnight!
"point the solar funnel toward the stars ... to freeze your pot..."
while I *think* he means the funnel to act as a radiator (but it still wouldn't get any colder than the surrounding air with or without the funnel) ... it's not clear from the text ... well, let's just say "it's not clear from the text"
ooooookaaay. Maybe physics isn't his strongest suit either...
Update: I don't know how I missed this. It sort of, kinda, nearly toches on physics.
It certainly doesn't touch on engineering.
The Book of Mormon makes the bold statement that Jesus Christ, shortly following His resurrection, visited people in the New World and invited them to "feel the prints of the nails in my hands and in my feet, that ye may know that I am...the God of the whole earth, and have been slain for the sins of the world. ... Ye are they of whom I said: Other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice..." (3 Nephi 11:14, 15:21). The Bible states that Jesus "showed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days" and that this witness of Christ would be "unto the uttermost part of the earth." (Acts 1:3-8) and that Jesus would indeed visit "other sheep" (John 10:16).
Okay, well maybe that's not his strong suit. Maybe it's Physics. Let's see.
Look, instructions on how to make a solar power mirror!
At 40 degrees latitude on a clear afternoon, water can boil in 1.5 hours. Also you can point the solar funnel towards the stars on a cloudless night to freeze your pot overnight!
"point the solar funnel toward the stars ... to freeze your pot..."
while I *think* he means the funnel to act as a radiator (but it still wouldn't get any colder than the surrounding air with or without the funnel) ... it's not clear from the text ... well, let's just say "it's not clear from the text"
ooooookaaay. Maybe physics isn't his strongest suit either...
Update: I don't know how I missed this. It sort of, kinda, nearly toches on physics.
It certainly doesn't touch on engineering.
Snow!
The fourth horseman of the Seattle Apocalypse is loose. Snow! The weather forecasters say we might actually get 2 or more inches.
Now, being from New England and Detroit, 2 inches isn't even an annoyance, it's what happens when the wind blows. Here though, schools will close, roads will lock up, people will horde food, water and sensible woolen vests. Given that it will snow tonight, I am guessing almost no one shows up on campus tomorrow.
This, believe it or not, makes sense.
It makes sense because, and I mean no disrespect, these people do not know how to drive in the snow. Rain? Oh they have that down cold. Snow? No. They are still in the lowest snow-driving category along with Hawaiians, Arizonians, Haitians, Puerto Ricans and Texans. ... Well... maybe not Texans. They still have trouble with cold rain. However, Seattle folk have not developed snow driving skills through practice and so they simply make the basic mistakes no Midwesterner would make after the age of 16. Generally, they drive one of two ways. Most of them act as though snow was an odd form of rain (which is somewhat true) and don't change at all. The result? Extremely polite driving behavior at 75mph on a frictionless surface. They spin, and wave to their neighbors. They skid, and wave to let you cut in. They flip off to the side of the road but use turn signals. And, very occasionally, they slide down Pike Street into the bay at alarming velocity, worried that they’ve cut off a pedestrian.
For example, today there was NO SNOW, but a little bit of ice. Result? The 520 bridge is closed due to crashes, the 90 Bridge is now a 3 hour drive (or bay tour, take your pick). These are not well developed skilz.
But those are the A students. The real D- folks take another approach entirely. They drive on snow as though it were a rain of broken glass or perhaps rare, endangered spotted-owl eggs. They drive S L O W L Y. As they listen to the sound their tires make, a worried sweat breaks out on their foreheads. Crunch! Crunch! Every mph over 3 means more dead baby owls. And, if their wheels spin, you can actually see the panic on their faces as they realize they are driving TOO FAST!
"Jesus Christ Harry! Slow the fuck down! You're spinning the wheels!"
"I'm only doing 2mph! What should I put it in reverse?"
" ... .... Yes!"
Why the problems? Because they don't salt the roads (bad for the roads and the spotted-owl eggs) and they don't really plow. There is no budget for it. I was here once during a storm in late February. The town of Kirkland, having exhausted it's entire snow removal budget on new ice trays for the Mayor's office fridge, instead of plowing chose to, get this, "drive garbage trucks around town to compact the snow. For better traction!" I'm not making that up. They succeeded in turning almost every major road into an ice rink, with resulting hilarity! No fewer than 3 garbage trucks had to be towed out of yards (and one swimming pool) after the "compacted snow" or as we used to call it on the New England Ski trails, "packed powder", or more simply "death ice", caused major accidents all over town.
It's going to snow tomorrow and I am going to "work from home". No way I’m getting on the road with these folks.
Weeeeeeee! Snow Day!
Now, being from New England and Detroit, 2 inches isn't even an annoyance, it's what happens when the wind blows. Here though, schools will close, roads will lock up, people will horde food, water and sensible woolen vests. Given that it will snow tonight, I am guessing almost no one shows up on campus tomorrow.
This, believe it or not, makes sense.
It makes sense because, and I mean no disrespect, these people do not know how to drive in the snow. Rain? Oh they have that down cold. Snow? No. They are still in the lowest snow-driving category along with Hawaiians, Arizonians, Haitians, Puerto Ricans and Texans. ... Well... maybe not Texans. They still have trouble with cold rain. However, Seattle folk have not developed snow driving skills through practice and so they simply make the basic mistakes no Midwesterner would make after the age of 16. Generally, they drive one of two ways. Most of them act as though snow was an odd form of rain (which is somewhat true) and don't change at all. The result? Extremely polite driving behavior at 75mph on a frictionless surface. They spin, and wave to their neighbors. They skid, and wave to let you cut in. They flip off to the side of the road but use turn signals. And, very occasionally, they slide down Pike Street into the bay at alarming velocity, worried that they’ve cut off a pedestrian.
For example, today there was NO SNOW, but a little bit of ice. Result? The 520 bridge is closed due to crashes, the 90 Bridge is now a 3 hour drive (or bay tour, take your pick). These are not well developed skilz.
But those are the A students. The real D- folks take another approach entirely. They drive on snow as though it were a rain of broken glass or perhaps rare, endangered spotted-owl eggs. They drive S L O W L Y. As they listen to the sound their tires make, a worried sweat breaks out on their foreheads. Crunch! Crunch! Every mph over 3 means more dead baby owls. And, if their wheels spin, you can actually see the panic on their faces as they realize they are driving TOO FAST!
"Jesus Christ Harry! Slow the fuck down! You're spinning the wheels!"
"I'm only doing 2mph! What should I put it in reverse?"
Why the problems? Because they don't salt the roads (bad for the roads and the spotted-owl eggs) and they don't really plow. There is no budget for it. I was here once during a storm in late February. The town of Kirkland, having exhausted it's entire snow removal budget on new ice trays for the Mayor's office fridge, instead of plowing chose to, get this, "drive garbage trucks around town to compact the snow. For better traction!" I'm not making that up. They succeeded in turning almost every major road into an ice rink, with resulting hilarity! No fewer than 3 garbage trucks had to be towed out of yards (and one swimming pool) after the "compacted snow" or as we used to call it on the New England Ski trails, "packed powder", or more simply "death ice", caused major accidents all over town.
It's going to snow tomorrow and I am going to "work from home". No way I’m getting on the road with these folks.
Weeeeeeee! Snow Day!
Working on New Art
I did manage to get a little art started this weekend, although nothing far enough along to post drafts. Maybe another week. The piece is a still life that contains another image (also of my creation), so it's a picture in a picture thing.
The inspiration for this is the unparalleled Tomasz Rut.
The inspiration for this is the unparalleled Tomasz Rut.
Crash!
My Alpha drive crashed this weekend. Alpha was the first 233Gig USB 2.0 drive I got for the home server and is the oldest with, of course, most of the most interesting files.
I got it repaired, but lost about 20% of the file structure, including all my downloads of the Dave Chappelle show. Not good. So I went out and bought a new Maxtor 300Gig drive and backed up all the remaining files to it. Welcome drive Delta!
Alpha has been reformatted and put back into service, albiet only as backup storage and not online at all times.
I got it repaired, but lost about 20% of the file structure, including all my downloads of the Dave Chappelle show. Not good. So I went out and bought a new Maxtor 300Gig drive and backed up all the remaining files to it. Welcome drive Delta!
Alpha has been reformatted and put back into service, albiet only as backup storage and not online at all times.
Monorail
I was walking down 5th Ave in Seattle this weekend when something I thought pretty cool happened. As I was walking into the city center, the monorail train passed overhead. 'I live in a city where a monorail is commonplace, cool'. The cherry on the sundae occured when I looked at the ads on the side, "Windows Cluster Server". Not only was the monorail commonplace, but it was advertising my company. Outstanding! Very 20th century Sci-Fi.
Then, later in the day, the 21st century stepped in.
Then, later in the day, the 21st century stepped in.
Saturday, November 26, 2005
Quiet
Sorry for the gap in blogging. It's been kind of quiet around here. Jim has been in Seattle the last few days and, well, things did not go as well as I had hoped on Wednesday with the MS clinic (more later), so I have taken a few days off from the world.
I should be back with some items over the weekend.
I should be back with some items over the weekend.
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
Sony Rootkit
A really outstanding walkthrough of the Sony Rootkit story by Mark Russinovick, the analyst who discovered it. Added bonus; he links to all the tools.
The DRM reference made me recall having purchased a CD recently that can only be played using the media player that ships on the CD itself and that limits you to at most 3 copies. I scrounged through my CD’s and found it, Sony BMG’s Get Right with the Man (the name is ironic under the circumstances) CD by the Van Zant brothers.
Excellent quote from Sony President Thomas Hesse
The DRM reference made me recall having purchased a CD recently that can only be played using the media player that ships on the CD itself and that limits you to at most 3 copies. I scrounged through my CD’s and found it, Sony BMG’s Get Right with the Man (the name is ironic under the circumstances) CD by the Van Zant brothers.
Excellent quote from Sony President Thomas Hesse
Monday, November 21, 2005
On the Effectiveness of Aluminium Foil Helmets
An Empirical Study
I *KNEW* it!
When tin-foil hats are outlawed, only outlaws will have tin-foil hats.
UPDATE: What kind of scientist would I be if I didn't publish the rebuttle?
I *KNEW* it!
When tin-foil hats are outlawed, only outlaws will have tin-foil hats.
UPDATE: What kind of scientist would I be if I didn't publish the rebuttle?
Printing Your Resume At Work
Think no one can track your paper documents?
Think again.
http://www.eff.org/Privacy/printers/docucolor/
Think again.
http://www.eff.org/Privacy/printers/docucolor/
Decypher Dog
Muppet Babies meet the National Security Agency as seen by the marketing department.
I wish I could make this shit up.
I wish I could make this shit up.
On The Way Up
MSFT stock has been lanquishing at $24.50 +/- $1 for months and has been a drag on my portfolio. Last week I finally had enough and set an auto-sell order if it got to $27. It did last week. On it's way to $29+
Crap.
Crap.
Some Physics I Don't Quite Get
From the APOD:
Alternatively, surface particles may become electrically charged by the Sun, levitate in the microgravity field, and move to fill in craters.
I understand the Poynting-Robertson effect (applied here to asteroid dust instead of free particles but it's the relavent physics), and the whole suspended dust thing. The two-part question I don't know the answer to is a) if the gravity is that weak, why don't the particles just fly off all together and b) why don't we see this anywhere else?
It's a mystery.
Alternatively, surface particles may become electrically charged by the Sun, levitate in the microgravity field, and move to fill in craters.
I understand the Poynting-Robertson effect (applied here to asteroid dust instead of free particles but it's the relavent physics), and the whole suspended dust thing. The two-part question I don't know the answer to is a) if the gravity is that weak, why don't the particles just fly off all together and b) why don't we see this anywhere else?
It's a mystery.
Penn Jillette
I heard Penn on NPR's "This I Believe" this morning and thought he did a fantastic job expressing my view on religion. When I got in, I was going to post a link.
Ironically, I got some email this morning from Tara, linking me to the same piece. :) 20 years later and I am still the same.
Penn talks about an important part of atheism that a lot of sober, serious religious minded folk neglect, the basis for making moral choices. A lot of arguments I have had start with the naive view that "without god, men would all do evil", sort of the reverse of the Marxist-Leninist assumption. I've never bought into either extreme. If folks want to do bad, religion will give them an excuse to do what they want (like flying planes into buildings), similar to doing good (like running into a burning building to save folks). People's gods look an awful lot like themselves. My point is, dispense with the middleman and be more honest about morals. Folks will do what they think is right, god or no god.
Penn does a good job summarizing the economics of atheism:
Believing there's no God means I can't really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That's good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around.
Without God, we can agree on reality, and I can keep learning where I'm wrong. We can all keep adjusting, so we can really communicate. [...] So, believing there is no God lets me be proven wrong and that's always fun. It means I'm learning something.
Believing there is no God means the suffering I've seen in my family, and indeed all the suffering in the world, isn't caused by an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent force that isn't bothered to help or is just testing us, but rather something we all may be able to help others with in the future. No God means the possibility of less suffering in the future.
It's a good article and, while there is some moralizing and making fun of the other side, there is no more of it here than I've received in a decent catholic mass. It's just directed toward the folks who aren't used to being mocked.
Ironically, I got some email this morning from Tara, linking me to the same piece. :) 20 years later and I am still the same.
Penn talks about an important part of atheism that a lot of sober, serious religious minded folk neglect, the basis for making moral choices. A lot of arguments I have had start with the naive view that "without god, men would all do evil", sort of the reverse of the Marxist-Leninist assumption. I've never bought into either extreme. If folks want to do bad, religion will give them an excuse to do what they want (like flying planes into buildings), similar to doing good (like running into a burning building to save folks). People's gods look an awful lot like themselves. My point is, dispense with the middleman and be more honest about morals. Folks will do what they think is right, god or no god.
Penn does a good job summarizing the economics of atheism:
Believing there's no God means I can't really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That's good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around.
Without God, we can agree on reality, and I can keep learning where I'm wrong. We can all keep adjusting, so we can really communicate. [...] So, believing there is no God lets me be proven wrong and that's always fun. It means I'm learning something.
Believing there is no God means the suffering I've seen in my family, and indeed all the suffering in the world, isn't caused by an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent force that isn't bothered to help or is just testing us, but rather something we all may be able to help others with in the future. No God means the possibility of less suffering in the future.
It's a good article and, while there is some moralizing and making fun of the other side, there is no more of it here than I've received in a decent catholic mass. It's just directed toward the folks who aren't used to being mocked.
Supporting the Troops
I don't think this is what people have in mind exactly:
Here's how it works: non-military members sign up to adopt a soldier on Rush's website, while current military members sign up to be adopted. Once an adopter and an adoptee are matched up, the adopted soldier receives a free subscription to "The Limbaugh Letter" and to the premium content on Rush's website.
Fabulous! And all at the low, low cost of $50, which goes directly into Rush's pocket.
Oh, I'm sorry - you didn't think he was doing this out of charity did you? Nope, despite the fact that Rush's site claims to be offering "complimentary RUSH 24/7 subscriptions," if you want to be able to say you've adopted a soldier through Rush's program then you have to cough up the cash. Because someone's got to pay for those "complimentary subscriptions," and it sure as hell ain't gonna be Limbaugh.
(via)
Typical.
Here's how it works: non-military members sign up to adopt a soldier on Rush's website, while current military members sign up to be adopted. Once an adopter and an adoptee are matched up, the adopted soldier receives a free subscription to "The Limbaugh Letter" and to the premium content on Rush's website.
Fabulous! And all at the low, low cost of $50, which goes directly into Rush's pocket.
Oh, I'm sorry - you didn't think he was doing this out of charity did you? Nope, despite the fact that Rush's site claims to be offering "complimentary RUSH 24/7 subscriptions," if you want to be able to say you've adopted a soldier through Rush's program then you have to cough up the cash. Because someone's got to pay for those "complimentary subscriptions," and it sure as hell ain't gonna be Limbaugh.
(via)
Typical.
Friday, November 18, 2005
Thursday, November 17, 2005
Now THIS is a Grudge!
The goons at Something Awful have had a long running feud with Eric Bauman, owner of eBaumsWorld.com. I've got a membership at SA, but was largely unaware of the feud until recently when Geoff found this parody of Eric’s (alleged) content-stealing ways.
2 things. 1) It's damn catchy (I might use the bit about male prostitutes someday in an argument and 2) it's a great use of parody.
2 things. 1) It's damn catchy (I might use the bit about male prostitutes someday in an argument and 2) it's a great use of parody.
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
Everyone, quick! Swap seats!
An interesting justaposition of Condi and Hillary in Isreal this week, especially in the visuals.
It's terrifying to me that either of those two has even a remote shot at being president. I can't stand either one.
It's terrifying to me that either of those two has even a remote shot at being president. I can't stand either one.
Slowly Getting Back Up to Speed
I've received a number of emails and phone calls this week asking how I am doing. Thanks all, I'm doing fine. After I got out of the hospital on Thursday, the movers came nad packed up the apartment on Friday. I spent the weekend in Maine, and now I'm going stop-to-stop on my way back to Redmond. I managed to spend a good chunk of yesterday with Geoff which was also overdue.
I should be back to Seattle tomorrow and probably back to my cranky, skeptical self again shortly after that. It's been a busy couple of months.
I should be back to Seattle tomorrow and probably back to my cranky, skeptical self again shortly after that. It's been a busy couple of months.
In Astronomy News
Lori Allen, one of the 6 members of my graduate class as UMass, made the NYT Science section this week with images from her telescope, Spitzer.
The astronomers, led by Lori E. Allen of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, say the towering mountains of the new image probably represent the densest, most fecund remnants of a larger, cloud. It is being eroded by radiation and winds of particles from a ferociously bright star just out of the top of the picture.
Nestled within the dusty pillars are hundreds of embryonic stars. But Spitzer's detectors are designed to see infrared, or "heat," radiation right through the dust, allowing astronomers to study the cloaked stars, which Dr. Allen described as "offspring" of the big star.
"The Sun could have formed in such a cluster, since many stars form in clusters," Dr. Allen said in an e-mail message, explaining that pressure created by the star could compress gas in the cloud, bringing about the formation of new stars.
The astronomers, led by Lori E. Allen of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, say the towering mountains of the new image probably represent the densest, most fecund remnants of a larger, cloud. It is being eroded by radiation and winds of particles from a ferociously bright star just out of the top of the picture.
Nestled within the dusty pillars are hundreds of embryonic stars. But Spitzer's detectors are designed to see infrared, or "heat," radiation right through the dust, allowing astronomers to study the cloaked stars, which Dr. Allen described as "offspring" of the big star.
"The Sun could have formed in such a cluster, since many stars form in clusters," Dr. Allen said in an e-mail message, explaining that pressure created by the star could compress gas in the cloud, bringing about the formation of new stars.
Monday, November 14, 2005
Looking all... well... Mature...
notice I said Mature instead of the word I was really thinking...
I suppose I'll have to eventually stop calling him "the boy"
He is, Literally, THE Man
unless he is a woman.
Copied verbatim from a diner placemat I received at Little Peter's Seafood Restaurant in Enfield Maine:
Howland was incorporated in 1826, and was named after Mayflower passenger John Howland. It's population is 1,362 is 47.2% male and 52.8% female. 98.1% are white, 1% two or more races and 0.9% American Indian. The median resident age is 39.8 years. Median household income is $29,213. Howland's elevation above sea level is 170 feet.
Enfield was incorporated in 1835. 1,616 people call Enfield home. 98.76% of them are white, 0.06% African American, 0.93% two or more races and 0.19% American Indian. The median age is 38 years. Median household income is $36,458
So, during my BLT I recognized that 1616 * 0.0006 was about... 1. !
Copied verbatim from a diner placemat I received at Little Peter's Seafood Restaurant in Enfield Maine:
Howland was incorporated in 1826, and was named after Mayflower passenger John Howland. It's population is 1,362 is 47.2% male and 52.8% female. 98.1% are white, 1% two or more races and 0.9% American Indian. The median resident age is 39.8 years. Median household income is $29,213. Howland's elevation above sea level is 170 feet.
Enfield was incorporated in 1835. 1,616 people call Enfield home. 98.76% of them are white, 0.06% African American, 0.93% two or more races and 0.19% American Indian. The median age is 38 years. Median household income is $36,458
So, during my BLT I recognized that 1616 * 0.0006 was about... 1. !
Saturday, November 12, 2005
My Best Friend from Junior High...
... writes me the best note I have recieved in months. Tara and I were inseperable friends at the Charles E Brake Junior High in Taylor Michigan 28 years ago. Tara introduced me to Steve Martin, Saturday Night Live and a host of other life-shaping things. I moved to PA in 1978 and haven't really heard from here since about 1980.
Yesterday, I receved this note on my AOL account:
Dear Mr. Horvath,
Little did I know that my search for "Evil Genius" on Google this morning would lead me to you. Again.
Yesterday, I receved this note on my AOL account:
Dear Mr. Horvath,
Little did I know that my search for "Evil Genius" on Google this morning would lead me to you. Again.
How I Got My Diagnosis
It's last Wednesday. I have been sitting in the epilepsy ward of the Lahey Clinic. A couple dozen multicolored wires have been super glued to my head, I am being monitored and video taped 24/7 and have a long tether which connects the probes to the wall. My laptop and cell phone have been taken away. Apparently use of the latter two objects cause the EEG probes to read them as seizures. After the first time the crash cart arrived in my room and found me reading Kos, they took them away from me.
They are used to patients who have large dramatic seizures, are old or cannot take care of themselves. They have twice threatened me with restraints if I get up and go to the bathroom on my own. They are trying to take charge of my insulin regime and had, at that point, managed to make a has of it. I threatened to walk out and sue of they didn't let me do my insulin myself. They relented and I give myself all my injections (even apart from insulin). The staff and I have a fragile détente. AFAIK there has been no progress on my diagnosis except to rule out metal poisoning.
I get a call on my plastic, wired room phone which has so far, only range once:
Me: hello?
MS Person: Hi this is Mrs. X from MS Benefits! We just got your diagnosis and wanted to let you know that I'll be your case worker. I work for Premera and will help you steer through all the paperwork, appointments and therapy. I need to get some information from you is that okay?
Me:Well, I'm in the hospital, and I don't have anything else to do ...
MSP: Great. You're Mark Horvath.
Me: Yes.
MSP: You're currently in the Lahey Clinic Room 7W30?
Me: Yes
MSP: You're employee Number is XXXXXX. Your Birthday is 8/2/64?
Me:Yes.
[After more info exchange]
MSP: Terrific, thanks Mark. Now I'd like to get you set up with a doctor here who specializes in your condition, unless you have someone you're already seeing.
Me: No. No one in Seattle. What do you have down as my diagnosis?
MSP: Oh, Multiple Sclerosis. Why?
Me: ... oh. They hadn't told me that.
MSP: (Oh SHIT Silence)..... .... ....
Me: So who would you recommend I see out there?
MSP: I'm sorry, I thought they told you. I'm not supposed to give diagnosis to patients.
Me: No problem, I'm seeing the doctors this afternoon anyway. Are there specialists in Seattle.
MSP:oh Yes! Overlake has a whole facility. Would you like me to schedule you an appointment with the head of neurology?
Me: yes please....
and so, in violation of HIPAA, GLB and a variety of other laws, MS Benefits and their cost-controlling eager-beaverism gave me my diagnosis of MS. I talked to my doctors later and went through a bunch of things with them. MS is their current working hypothesis, although after reviewing the tapes they *strongly* recommended I go get a test for Huntington's. They wouldn't run it there because, by federal law, there needs to be "genetic counseling" with a Huntington's test and, since I was moving to Seattle, they felt they could not provide this. They did give me some print outs of where I could get this done and re-emphasized that I should do this sooner rather than later, "just in case".
and there it is.
I doubt the Huntington's hypothesis just because AFAIK, my father doesn't have it. This assumes my father is actually my biological father which I have not has cause to doubt until this week.
OTOH, it would explain a few things....
Anyway, that's the story. All other things being equal, I have MS, just like my sister.
They are used to patients who have large dramatic seizures, are old or cannot take care of themselves. They have twice threatened me with restraints if I get up and go to the bathroom on my own. They are trying to take charge of my insulin regime and had, at that point, managed to make a has of it. I threatened to walk out and sue of they didn't let me do my insulin myself. They relented and I give myself all my injections (even apart from insulin). The staff and I have a fragile détente. AFAIK there has been no progress on my diagnosis except to rule out metal poisoning.
I get a call on my plastic, wired room phone which has so far, only range once:
Me: hello?
MS Person: Hi this is Mrs. X from MS Benefits! We just got your diagnosis and wanted to let you know that I'll be your case worker. I work for Premera and will help you steer through all the paperwork, appointments and therapy. I need to get some information from you is that okay?
Me:
MSP: Great. You're Mark Horvath.
Me: Yes.
MSP: You're currently in the Lahey Clinic Room 7W30?
Me: Yes
MSP: You're employee Number is XXXXXX. Your Birthday is 8/2/64?
Me:
[After more info exchange]
MSP: Terrific, thanks Mark. Now I'd like to get you set up with a doctor here who specializes in your condition, unless you have someone you're already seeing.
Me: No. No one in Seattle. What do you have down as my diagnosis?
MSP: Oh, Multiple Sclerosis. Why?
Me: ... oh. They hadn't told me that.
MSP: (Oh SHIT Silence)
Me: So who would you recommend I see out there?
MSP: I'm sorry, I thought they told you. I'm not supposed to give diagnosis to patients.
Me: No problem, I'm seeing the doctors this afternoon anyway. Are there specialists in Seattle.
MSP:
Me: yes please....
and so, in violation of HIPAA, GLB and a variety of other laws, MS Benefits and their cost-controlling eager-beaverism gave me my diagnosis of MS. I talked to my doctors later and went through a bunch of things with them. MS is their current working hypothesis, although after reviewing the tapes they *strongly* recommended I go get a test for Huntington's. They wouldn't run it there because, by federal law, there needs to be "genetic counseling" with a Huntington's test and, since I was moving to Seattle, they felt they could not provide this. They did give me some print outs of where I could get this done and re-emphasized that I should do this sooner rather than later, "just in case".
and there it is.
I doubt the Huntington's hypothesis just because AFAIK, my father doesn't have it. This assumes my father is actually my biological father which I have not has cause to doubt until this week.
OTOH, it would explain a few things....
Anyway, that's the story. All other things being equal, I have MS, just like my sister.
Monday, November 07, 2005
Possible Downtime
I'm off to Lahey this morning. While it's possible they have a wireless connection I can ride, I'm not counting on it. Updates, in theory Friday.
Bremsstrahlung
I bought City of Heros this weekend (possibly for use at Lahey if there is an internet connection there, although my hopes are low) and it was fantastic. This is the first on-line RPG I've ever played and it was not as intimidating as I thought it would be. I figured everyone would be better at everything than me (kind of like gym class), but there were lots of low level folks to help me along and plenty of things to do on my own. Once or twice though I got stuck in an area of the city where I was so overmatched by level 20 street thugs it took me several lives to get out.
I put together a "science hero" with broad based electrical powers and good all over stats (a blaster), complete with blue spandex tights. I'm sure everyone else recognized it as a first avatar, but it wasn't too bad. I decided to name him Bremsstrahlung after a type of astrophysical radiation common in the interstellar medium. Much to my total surprise, it was taken! I was totally floored! It was like naming your baby Chlamydia and finding out that someone else took it. I ended up naming him AXAF after the satellite of the same name, however, I have started thinking about some names:
Captain Physics
Blue Screen of Death
Colonel Panic
Major Trouble
Chlamydia the Hilarious Clown
I am happily taking suggestions (with suggestions for powers)
I put together a "science hero" with broad based electrical powers and good all over stats (a blaster), complete with blue spandex tights. I'm sure everyone else recognized it as a first avatar, but it wasn't too bad. I decided to name him Bremsstrahlung after a type of astrophysical radiation common in the interstellar medium. Much to my total surprise, it was taken! I was totally floored! It was like naming your baby Chlamydia and finding out that someone else took it. I ended up naming him AXAF after the satellite of the same name, however, I have started thinking about some names:
Captain Physics
Blue Screen of Death
Colonel Panic
Major Trouble
Chlamydia the Hilarious Clown
I am happily taking suggestions (with suggestions for powers)
Guantanamo Bay Diet
Posted without comment:
It hasn't received much coverage in the mainstream media - at least not in America anyway - but it's currently reckoned that about 200 of the inmates at Guantanamo Bay are taking part in a hunger strike which is eliciting concern from the International Red Cross.
Why are they doing this? Because they want to be treated in a manner consistent with the Geneva Conventions. Best of luck with that one.
Of course the military have put their own spin on the situation, calling the hunger strike a "voluntary fast," with a mere 26 participants. 21 of those participants have apparently been hospitalized for "assisted feedings" via a tube placed up the nose and down the throat. According to The Nation:
...someone committed to self-starvation could easily remove such a tube, if he had any freedom of movement. So we can surmise that there is a line of twenty-one hospital beds, each with a prisoner held tight in four-point restraints. His head must be strapped down, immobile, and forcible sedation seems probable. Hardly the image evoked by the term "assisted feeding."
Thank goodness Donald Rumsfeld is here to explain the situation more clearly. Last week he told reporters, "There are a number of people who go on a diet where they don't eat for a period and then go off of it at some point. And then they rotate and other people do that."
So let me get this straight... down at Six Flags Guantanamo Bay the inmates have "never been treated better;" in fact we're feeding them so much honey-glazed chicken and lemon-baked fish that every so often they decide to go on a diet!
George Orwell must be vomiting in his grave.
It hasn't received much coverage in the mainstream media - at least not in America anyway - but it's currently reckoned that about 200 of the inmates at Guantanamo Bay are taking part in a hunger strike which is eliciting concern from the International Red Cross.
Why are they doing this? Because they want to be treated in a manner consistent with the Geneva Conventions. Best of luck with that one.
Of course the military have put their own spin on the situation, calling the hunger strike a "voluntary fast," with a mere 26 participants. 21 of those participants have apparently been hospitalized for "assisted feedings" via a tube placed up the nose and down the throat. According to The Nation:
...someone committed to self-starvation could easily remove such a tube, if he had any freedom of movement. So we can surmise that there is a line of twenty-one hospital beds, each with a prisoner held tight in four-point restraints. His head must be strapped down, immobile, and forcible sedation seems probable. Hardly the image evoked by the term "assisted feeding."
Thank goodness Donald Rumsfeld is here to explain the situation more clearly. Last week he told reporters, "There are a number of people who go on a diet where they don't eat for a period and then go off of it at some point. And then they rotate and other people do that."
So let me get this straight... down at Six Flags Guantanamo Bay the inmates have "never been treated better;" in fact we're feeding them so much honey-glazed chicken and lemon-baked fish that every so often they decide to go on a diet!
George Orwell must be vomiting in his grave.
Saturday, November 05, 2005
2 Tons
"Books: 4000+ lbs"
Item from the inventory of Grabel movers on our apartment.
Holy Shit!
I would never have guessed we had that many books. OTOH, all the closets are full, every corner is piled with them etc. We have pieces of furniture which are effectively 90% book by weight. If you've never been inside the apartment, this is the reason why. It's usually a mess with books all over the place. But two tons?? I would never have guessed that.
Item from the inventory of Grabel movers on our apartment.
Holy Shit!
I would never have guessed we had that many books. OTOH, all the closets are full, every corner is piled with them etc. We have pieces of furniture which are effectively 90% book by weight. If you've never been inside the apartment, this is the reason why. It's usually a mess with books all over the place. But two tons?? I would never have guessed that.
Friday, November 04, 2005
A Complex Quote
I'm not sure what to make of this quote from Bill Frist:
''It was, of course, a heinous and dishonest thing to do. And I was totally schizoid about the entire matter. By day, I was little Billy Frist, the boy who lived on Bowling Avenue in Nashville and had decided to become a doctor because of his gentle father and a dog named Scratchy. By night, I was Dr. William Harrison Frist, future cardiothoracic surgeon, who was not going to let a few sentiments about cute, furry little creatures stand in the way of his career. In short, I was going a little crazy.''
--From Bill Frist's 1989 memoir concerning his capturing, killing and dissecting of cats
I'm not sure of the context of "capturing, killing and dissecting of cats". If he means he caught them himself and dissected them, it seems a little weird. I don't know that much about med school, so if anyone has any idea, I'd appreciate enlightenment.
He certainly seems to have a conflicted tone here, arrogant, ambitious and yet uncomfortable about his moral limits. And, to his credit, self-aware enough to know he's uncomfortable. In general I am slightly more reassured by this than if he had no qualms about (I'm presuming) hunting and killing cats. OTOH, he clearly went past some outer moral lighthouse on this and kept going. Maybe that's a strength, maybe it's sociopathic ambition, I can't tell.
It's an interesting quote though, even if I can't quite parse it.
There is more, even more amaturish psychobable here. I think the writer read too much into it.
''It was, of course, a heinous and dishonest thing to do. And I was totally schizoid about the entire matter. By day, I was little Billy Frist, the boy who lived on Bowling Avenue in Nashville and had decided to become a doctor because of his gentle father and a dog named Scratchy. By night, I was Dr. William Harrison Frist, future cardiothoracic surgeon, who was not going to let a few sentiments about cute, furry little creatures stand in the way of his career. In short, I was going a little crazy.''
--From Bill Frist's 1989 memoir concerning his capturing, killing and dissecting of cats
I'm not sure of the context of "capturing, killing and dissecting of cats". If he means he caught them himself and dissected them, it seems a little weird. I don't know that much about med school, so if anyone has any idea, I'd appreciate enlightenment.
He certainly seems to have a conflicted tone here, arrogant, ambitious and yet uncomfortable about his moral limits. And, to his credit, self-aware enough to know he's uncomfortable. In general I am slightly more reassured by this than if he had no qualms about (I'm presuming) hunting and killing cats. OTOH, he clearly went past some outer moral lighthouse on this and kept going. Maybe that's a strength, maybe it's sociopathic ambition, I can't tell.
It's an interesting quote though, even if I can't quite parse it.
There is more, even more amaturish psychobable here. I think the writer read too much into it.
A Risk I Am Willing to Take
I had a dream as a kid where I died in the Middle East in my 40's. It was very strong and for a long time (until the date in question finally passed) I superstitiously gave it a wide berth.
Geoff brings this into the conversation below:
Toast171: You know, in the dream where I get shot coming off the plane in the middle east, you are standing next to me.
Toast171: Maybe you do come with me after all
Thaurloteion: see? so i have to come
Thaurloteion: otherwise it disrupts the timeline
Toast171: and it would cause a cascade of quantum collapse across all the realities. You are a nexus.
Toast171: {I heard that on Dr. Who}
Thaurloteion: well see then i have to go
Toast171: actually, according to temporal physics, you already went.
Toast171: You go because you always go
Toast171: nothing I decide can change it
Thaurloteion: so book me a ticket
Toast171: oh, you have to pay for it yourself
Toast171: but you do, because you always do
Toast171: in a sense, you already paid for it
Thaurloteion: how do you know i dont always have my ticket purchased for me?
Toast171: it's a possible disruption to the fabric of all reality I am willing to risk
Thaurloteion: but think of all those alternate realities you could wipe out
Toast171: Every decision wipes out alternate realities.
Toast171: Chicken or Fish? Poof! Millions of worlds gone
Toast171: Coke or Pepsi
Toast171: smooth or ribbed
Toast171: it's all the same
Geoff brings this into the conversation below:
Toast171: You know, in the dream where I get shot coming off the plane in the middle east, you are standing next to me.
Toast171: Maybe you do come with me after all
Thaurloteion: see? so i have to come
Thaurloteion: otherwise it disrupts the timeline
Toast171: and it would cause a cascade of quantum collapse across all the realities. You are a nexus.
Toast171: {I heard that on Dr. Who}
Thaurloteion: well see then i have to go
Toast171: actually, according to temporal physics, you already went.
Toast171: You go because you always go
Toast171: nothing I decide can change it
Thaurloteion: so book me a ticket
Toast171: oh, you have to pay for it yourself
Toast171: but you do, because you always do
Toast171: in a sense, you already paid for it
Thaurloteion: how do you know i dont always have my ticket purchased for me?
Toast171: it's a possible disruption to the fabric of all reality I am willing to risk
Thaurloteion: but think of all those alternate realities you could wipe out
Toast171: Every decision wipes out alternate realities.
Toast171: Chicken or Fish? Poof! Millions of worlds gone
Toast171: Coke or Pepsi
Toast171: smooth or ribbed
Toast171: it's all the same
I Blog, You Decide
I have an opportunity to perhaps go to Iraq and help them set up some infrastrucutre for a Central Bank. Working with third world countries and getting them into the payments area has become an accidental speciality at MSFT and we are considering going in and setting up a good portion of the central systems.
I made the mistake of mentioning this to Geoff.
Thaurloteion: when are you supposed to go to iraq?
Toast171: dunno
Thaurloteion: where in iraq are you supposed to go?
Toast171: Baghdad, in theory
Thaurloteion: can i come too?
Toast171: I'm thinking... no
Thaurloteion: you said next time you got a security detail i could come
Toast171: ...
Toast171: I didn't mean go "into a war zone"
Thaurloteion: I don’t eat much and I don’t know right from wrong
Toast171: neither of those things are true
Toast171: I am not taking you to Iraq
Thaurloteion: maybe it'll scare me away from thinking about enlisting
Toast171: like scared straight?
Thaurloteion: yes
Toast171: ... but with bullets instead of anal rape
Thaurloteion: right
Toast171: No!
Thaurloteion: please?
Toast171: I don't think this is a "please" situation
Thaurloteion: what kind of situation is it?
Toast171: a Kevlar pajamas kind
Thaurloteion: that wouldn’t be an issue if you would have bought me that kevlar i wanted in high school
Toast171: The past is full of regrets for all of us
Thaurloteion: travel abroad is always a plus on a resume
Thaurloteion: especially a resume for the letter soups
Toast171: so is "being alive"
Thaurloteion: that’s what the security detail is for
Thaurloteion: plus itd be a good networking opportunity
Thaurloteion: i could talk with the civilian contractors and see who's hiring and such
Toast171: networking with Al Queda?
Thaurloteion: no, places like kbr
Thaurloteion: it'd be a nice thing to do
Toast171: How about if I blog this and let the responses decide?
Thaurloteion: ok
Thaurloteion: if there’s one thing we republicans are good at, its rigging elections
Comment below please
I made the mistake of mentioning this to Geoff.
Thaurloteion: when are you supposed to go to iraq?
Toast171: dunno
Thaurloteion: where in iraq are you supposed to go?
Toast171: Baghdad, in theory
Thaurloteion: can i come too?
Toast171: I'm thinking... no
Thaurloteion: you said next time you got a security detail i could come
Toast171: ...
Toast171: I didn't mean go "into a war zone"
Thaurloteion: I don’t eat much and I don’t know right from wrong
Toast171: neither of those things are true
Toast171: I am not taking you to Iraq
Thaurloteion: maybe it'll scare me away from thinking about enlisting
Toast171: like scared straight?
Thaurloteion: yes
Toast171: ... but with bullets instead of anal rape
Thaurloteion: right
Toast171: No!
Thaurloteion: please?
Toast171: I don't think this is a "please" situation
Thaurloteion: what kind of situation is it?
Toast171: a Kevlar pajamas kind
Thaurloteion: that wouldn’t be an issue if you would have bought me that kevlar i wanted in high school
Toast171: The past is full of regrets for all of us
Thaurloteion: travel abroad is always a plus on a resume
Thaurloteion: especially a resume for the letter soups
Toast171: so is "being alive"
Thaurloteion: that’s what the security detail is for
Thaurloteion: plus itd be a good networking opportunity
Thaurloteion: i could talk with the civilian contractors and see who's hiring and such
Toast171: networking with Al Queda?
Thaurloteion: no, places like kbr
Thaurloteion: it'd be a nice thing to do
Toast171: How about if I blog this and let the responses decide?
Thaurloteion: ok
Thaurloteion: if there’s one thing we republicans are good at, its rigging elections
Comment below please
What I Do for a Living
I often get asked, especially by friends I don’t see very often, what I do for a living. Sometimes it’s kind of hard to describe and, often, my job title doesn’t help much or is only tangentially related. Generally speaking, I solve various kinds of problems. Sometimes they are problems in logistics, or software testing, or design and engineering. Occasionally they are management or personnel problems and every once in a great while, it’s a problem like funding or patents. Once or twice in my career, I’ve been asked to work on a team which tries to solve something big, sometimes really big, and I enjoy these jobs the most.
Often, but certainly not always (or even the majority of time), my solutions work. Most times they don’t work completely and sometimes they totally fail. Generally though, the sum value of all the working bits outweighs the non-working bits and folks end up giving me more problems to solve. When I was younger, I would do this in ways which would often frustrate and annoy my friends because, while everyone would agree the solution worked, no one quite understood how I’d come up with it. [One that comes to mind was solving a complicated problem involving inductive transformers by looking at the problem as a magnetic circuit and solving it in 3 lines. Knezek actually whaled on me with a copy of Jackson for about 5 minutes until I hit her back. To this day *I* am considered the bully there for some reason!] These days, since I am being paid and the solutions often have some value, no one really cares much how I did it.
This is good, because often, I don’t know either.
Once in a very great while, usually only once or twice in one of my 5 year company careers, I do something really cool. At CertCo I got to do that twice, once with the Identrus architecture and once again with the NTBTO. At HKS I invented an automated QA system that used an AI. At Kurzweil… well, nothing that great actually. Some UI stuff, some organizational stuff, but nothing “oh!” kind of clever. I never work on these alone, so I would never claim sole credit, but they are cool collaborative efforts in which I’ve seen an idea of mine come to life.
I’ve gotten my first opportunity to do one of these at Microsoft. In this case, it’s the future of banking. The challenge; only given technology you have accessible today, design a banking/trade floor system that will last for 30 years. Burroughs did this in the late 60s, early 70’s, IBM did it in the mid-70’s, as did Tandum and a few others. But all those systems are old now and, despite the fact that I don’t believe in a singularity per se, technology really is changing very fast, Moore’s law is still approximately correct and standards are evolving at a pace which calls into question the use of the word. The old systems are dying quickly and there is a real problem with replacement. Some would say “don’t bother, it’s changing too fast. Design it for 5 to 7 years.” Which would be a fair answer to another technologist, but bankers just won’t accept it. Y2K was a big shock to them and many have not gotten over it or really understand why it happened. Bankers think in 30 year timeslots and MSFT has gone in, unsuccessfully with the 5-7 year line for 20 years now and it simply doesn’t fly.
Kenny McBride, the head of MSFT Capital Markets along with Warren Lewis and David Vander in Banking, and I have been cranking on this problem for about a year now. The first cut of this is ready for public consumption, at least at the Vision/prototype level. We’ve put together 5 technical architectures in Payments, Trade Order Management, Insurance, Compliance and Channel Renewal, all based on existing technology, pieces of which are in play at different banks and Financial Service Institutions all over the planet. I’ve been test marketing the idea now for a few months and showing parts of it to various audiences, all of whom have given valuable feedback. This package was launched this week at the event with the PSI Banker’s School and Microsoft’s ISU 2005 and it seems to have gotten a good reception.
Our Industry and Innovation group (i.e. the marketing group), sat down with Warren, David and myself and asked us a bunch of questions about what this will look like, then put together the following. This is not a technical presentation, but one for getting the banking community to take a look at the underlying architectures and getting them to think about what is possible. Think of this as the commercial which gets them into the showroom where I can talk to them about the engine, gas mileage etc. Since it’s been launched, I think I’m allowed to show it.
It’s here although, somewhat ironically, you’ll need flash to run it. Don’t ask me, I think our whole marketing department runs on Quark Express or some crazy crap like that. Also, it's large. Very Large, 50M
[Update: some security systems won't let you run the demo. I've posted a zip with everything you need ZIPFILE. Download and run it from that. Apologies}
Everything in it is possible to put into production today. All the really hard bits; straight through processing, reference data lookup, micropayments, TARGET 2, STEP2, Basel, etc. are all covered in the technical architecture, which is under NDA. I can say most of the solutions are based on variations of an Enterprise Service Bus architecture, and all of them are compatible with existing systems, legacy systems, unix etc. Mobility is a key technology and, using the .NET framework, the application code is largely independent of the end rendering device, i.e. I can write a smart client app for the desktop and it will work with little or no modification on a mobile platform.
It’s a cool thing and one of the few times I have something tangible I can show a general audience about what I do.
Often, but certainly not always (or even the majority of time), my solutions work. Most times they don’t work completely and sometimes they totally fail. Generally though, the sum value of all the working bits outweighs the non-working bits and folks end up giving me more problems to solve. When I was younger, I would do this in ways which would often frustrate and annoy my friends because, while everyone would agree the solution worked, no one quite understood how I’d come up with it. [One that comes to mind was solving a complicated problem involving inductive transformers by looking at the problem as a magnetic circuit and solving it in 3 lines. Knezek actually whaled on me with a copy of Jackson for about 5 minutes until I hit her back. To this day *I* am considered the bully there for some reason!] These days, since I am being paid and the solutions often have some value, no one really cares much how I did it.
This is good, because often, I don’t know either.
Once in a very great while, usually only once or twice in one of my 5 year company careers, I do something really cool. At CertCo I got to do that twice, once with the Identrus architecture and once again with the NTBTO. At HKS I invented an automated QA system that used an AI. At Kurzweil… well, nothing that great actually. Some UI stuff, some organizational stuff, but nothing “oh!” kind of clever. I never work on these alone, so I would never claim sole credit, but they are cool collaborative efforts in which I’ve seen an idea of mine come to life.
I’ve gotten my first opportunity to do one of these at Microsoft. In this case, it’s the future of banking. The challenge; only given technology you have accessible today, design a banking/trade floor system that will last for 30 years. Burroughs did this in the late 60s, early 70’s, IBM did it in the mid-70’s, as did Tandum and a few others. But all those systems are old now and, despite the fact that I don’t believe in a singularity per se, technology really is changing very fast, Moore’s law is still approximately correct and standards are evolving at a pace which calls into question the use of the word. The old systems are dying quickly and there is a real problem with replacement. Some would say “don’t bother, it’s changing too fast. Design it for 5 to 7 years.” Which would be a fair answer to another technologist, but bankers just won’t accept it. Y2K was a big shock to them and many have not gotten over it or really understand why it happened. Bankers think in 30 year timeslots and MSFT has gone in, unsuccessfully with the 5-7 year line for 20 years now and it simply doesn’t fly.
Kenny McBride, the head of MSFT Capital Markets along with Warren Lewis and David Vander in Banking, and I have been cranking on this problem for about a year now. The first cut of this is ready for public consumption, at least at the Vision/prototype level. We’ve put together 5 technical architectures in Payments, Trade Order Management, Insurance, Compliance and Channel Renewal, all based on existing technology, pieces of which are in play at different banks and Financial Service Institutions all over the planet. I’ve been test marketing the idea now for a few months and showing parts of it to various audiences, all of whom have given valuable feedback. This package was launched this week at the event with the PSI Banker’s School and Microsoft’s ISU 2005 and it seems to have gotten a good reception.
Our Industry and Innovation group (i.e. the marketing group), sat down with Warren, David and myself and asked us a bunch of questions about what this will look like, then put together the following. This is not a technical presentation, but one for getting the banking community to take a look at the underlying architectures and getting them to think about what is possible. Think of this as the commercial which gets them into the showroom where I can talk to them about the engine, gas mileage etc. Since it’s been launched, I think I’m allowed to show it.
It’s here although, somewhat ironically, you’ll need flash to run it. Don’t ask me, I think our whole marketing department runs on Quark Express or some crazy crap like that. Also, it's large. Very Large, 50M
[Update: some security systems won't let you run the demo. I've posted a zip with everything you need ZIPFILE. Download and run it from that. Apologies}
Everything in it is possible to put into production today. All the really hard bits; straight through processing, reference data lookup, micropayments, TARGET 2, STEP2, Basel, etc. are all covered in the technical architecture, which is under NDA. I can say most of the solutions are based on variations of an Enterprise Service Bus architecture, and all of them are compatible with existing systems, legacy systems, unix etc. Mobility is a key technology and, using the .NET framework, the application code is largely independent of the end rendering device, i.e. I can write a smart client app for the desktop and it will work with little or no modification on a mobile platform.
It’s a cool thing and one of the few times I have something tangible I can show a general audience about what I do.
The Heart of the Problem with Traditional Marriage
Dan Savage gets the prototypical letter on "tired marriage syndrome"
Various Conversations with Geoff
He's 20 now, I have to stop calling him "the boy"
Thaurloteion: hows banker college?
Toast171: good! My bank placed 4th overall. I made a lot of money, but lost some accounts
Thaurloteion: did they give you surprises
Thaurloteion: like a robbery
Thaurloteion: robberies drive away accounts
Toast171: It was a $100,000,000,000 bank in 15 states. Robbery is built into the model.
Thaurloteion: oh, good then
Thaurloteion: if you were a school you could make a banner like the one at the school near work
Thaurloteion: it says the school name
Thaurloteion: and what appears to be a motto or something motivational
Thaurloteion: it says "We made adequate yearly progress in 2004"
Toast171: Our bank, with $100 billion in assets was called "The Penny Bank"
Toast171: because we had a lot of pennies
Thaurloteion: one time i hit someone with a sock full of pennies
Thaurloteion: he said it hurt
Thaurloteion: why does your bank hurt people?
Toast171: To teach people painful lessons about saving money
...
Thaurloteion: did the doctors ever shine a light in your eye to look for a ring of copper?
Thaurloteion: see i saw this on a tv show
Toast171: not my eye, no.
Thaurloteion: there was this crazy lady, and they thought she had schizophrenia
Thaurloteion: but she wasnt crazy she just had some kind of disease that puts copper in your eye
Toast171: Wilson's Disease. It's very rare.
Thaurloteion: probably
Toast171: There is a chance I have that
Thaurloteion: oh
Thaurloteion: thats bad
Toast171: No, it's good. It's curable
Thaurloteion: but it can be fatal
Toast171: the alternative is also fatal and less curable
Thaurloteion: oh, that is also bad
Toast171: I agree. It would also be bad news for my decendants
Thaurloteion: its genetic isnt it?
Toast171: yes, and dominant
Thaurloteion: thats bad for me. but why wouldnt it have shown up prior to now?
Toast171: It usually shows up at 40
Thaurloteion: oh
Toast171: but there is a genetic test for it, so you'd know now and 20 years to worry about it
Thaurloteion: so instead of a car for my midlife crisis, i'm going to get a fatal disease
Thaurloteion: great...
Toast171: no, they don't know that I have that. I'm still hoping for copper.
Thaurloteion: hey! i could play the sympathy card
Thaurloteion: it'd get mad wimmens
Toast171: besides, that means you're at mid-life now, so you'd get a cool car
Toast171: mad wimmins... hahahahhahahahahaha
Toast171: If you do, don't mention the insanity thing right away.
Toast171: wait until your third date
Thaurloteion: see thats the thing with having mad wimmens, its all one night stands and such
Thaurloteion: hows banker college?
Toast171: good! My bank placed 4th overall. I made a lot of money, but lost some accounts
Thaurloteion: did they give you surprises
Thaurloteion: like a robbery
Thaurloteion: robberies drive away accounts
Toast171: It was a $100,000,000,000 bank in 15 states. Robbery is built into the model.
Thaurloteion: oh, good then
Thaurloteion: if you were a school you could make a banner like the one at the school near work
Thaurloteion: it says the school name
Thaurloteion: and what appears to be a motto or something motivational
Thaurloteion: it says "We made adequate yearly progress in 2004"
Toast171: Our bank, with $100 billion in assets was called "The Penny Bank"
Toast171: because we had a lot of pennies
Thaurloteion: one time i hit someone with a sock full of pennies
Thaurloteion: he said it hurt
Thaurloteion: why does your bank hurt people?
Toast171: To teach people painful lessons about saving money
...
Thaurloteion: did the doctors ever shine a light in your eye to look for a ring of copper?
Thaurloteion: see i saw this on a tv show
Toast171: not my eye, no.
Thaurloteion: there was this crazy lady, and they thought she had schizophrenia
Thaurloteion: but she wasnt crazy she just had some kind of disease that puts copper in your eye
Toast171: Wilson's Disease. It's very rare.
Thaurloteion: probably
Toast171: There is a chance I have that
Thaurloteion: oh
Thaurloteion: thats bad
Toast171: No, it's good. It's curable
Thaurloteion: but it can be fatal
Toast171: the alternative is also fatal and less curable
Thaurloteion: oh, that is also bad
Toast171: I agree. It would also be bad news for my decendants
Thaurloteion: its genetic isnt it?
Toast171: yes, and dominant
Thaurloteion: thats bad for me. but why wouldnt it have shown up prior to now?
Toast171: It usually shows up at 40
Thaurloteion: oh
Toast171: but there is a genetic test for it, so you'd know now and 20 years to worry about it
Thaurloteion: so instead of a car for my midlife crisis, i'm going to get a fatal disease
Thaurloteion: great...
Toast171: no, they don't know that I have that. I'm still hoping for copper.
Thaurloteion: hey! i could play the sympathy card
Thaurloteion: it'd get mad wimmens
Toast171: besides, that means you're at mid-life now, so you'd get a cool car
Toast171: mad wimmins... hahahahhahahahahaha
Toast171: If you do, don't mention the insanity thing right away.
Toast171: wait until your third date
Thaurloteion: see thats the thing with having mad wimmens, its all one night stands and such
Thursday, November 03, 2005
Alito Speculation
From Volokh from Bloomberg
Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito Jr., meeting with lawmakers on Capitol Hill, told one senator that the U.S. Constitution guarantees a right to privacy and won praise from Democratic Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska. Senator Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, said Alito told him in their meeting that he recognized a right to privacy, the principle that underlies the Supreme Court's abortion rights rulings. "I think he believes in that fundamental right," Durbin told reporters in Washington
I'm guessing he makes it, short of another conservative backlash, a nanny problem, or photos of him eating a baby.
Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito Jr., meeting with lawmakers on Capitol Hill, told one senator that the U.S. Constitution guarantees a right to privacy and won praise from Democratic Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska. Senator Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, said Alito told him in their meeting that he recognized a right to privacy, the principle that underlies the Supreme Court's abortion rights rulings. "I think he believes in that fundamental right," Durbin told reporters in Washington
I'm guessing he makes it, short of another conservative backlash, a nanny problem, or photos of him eating a baby.
Banking School
I'm away this week, taking a course on how to run a bank. It's been more fun than it sounds so far, made more palatable by tools like the bank simulator. The first part of the day is spent on the blocking and tackling parts of banking, retail, commercial, operations, asset and liability management etc. In the afternoon we work in teams, are given a bank told to build a three year plan. The team is 4 or 5 people (one/two for retail/commercial, one for ops and one for asset management plus a CEO on some teams) and we are given a wide variety of knobs to turn, everything from ATM fees and locations to variable interest rate loans, interbank loans, overnight Fed loans etc. Each team is given the same bank to start, a little time on the simulator and then, at the end of the day, each team puts in a profile and the system runs them against each other along with some economic information. In the morning, we find out what we did right/wrong and what our status is among the other players.
There are about 100-120 folks in the class, divided into 4 regions of 7 banks each. Each team starts with the same bank and with the same economic info (e.g. prime is 800 bp but will goto to 775 at the end the of year one etc.) and with the FULL books and numbers for the bank. It would take the better part of a week to carefully parse the information, think it through and develop a strategy. We have 90 minutes. :)
Some observations:
Lots of folks cut all their mid and mass market programs and "focused" of high net worth. Of the 10-12 teams I talked to afterwards, all but one other took this strategy. Being a contrarian at heart, and remembering the ING think tank last month, I chose the other way and somewhat convinced the team to go along. We'll see today, but I suspect that there will be big fight for a handful of individuals and my Wall-mart, cheap and easy strategy will work (or I will have busted the bank, we'll see).
Most people were very conservative. They took this seriously and made no huge changes. We didn't either.
There was a trend in the HNWI data that, oddly, many of the HNWI strategy folks missed. HNW had a problem with non-performing loans, more so than mass market. This was surprising and we checked the data 4 or 5 times. We fixed this by raising minimum credit scores to 700 from 650 and then pouring some marketing money into it. Everyone else I talked to lowered this number. The way the sim works (I think), they will get a short term bump today, but then get hit hard on NPL tomorrow. We'll see.
No one took the "shoot the moon" strategy, i.e. no one liquidated all their branches and went totally online. Branches are a huge cost and the model would allow you to save huge by getting rid of them, but no one I talked to did. I hope today we find someone who did, I'd like to see how this pans out.
That's it. I'll update tomorrow, but the SimBank think is really a lot of fun and I'm learning shitloads about banking.
There are about 100-120 folks in the class, divided into 4 regions of 7 banks each. Each team starts with the same bank and with the same economic info (e.g. prime is 800 bp but will goto to 775 at the end the of year one etc.) and with the FULL books and numbers for the bank. It would take the better part of a week to carefully parse the information, think it through and develop a strategy. We have 90 minutes. :)
Some observations:
Lots of folks cut all their mid and mass market programs and "focused" of high net worth. Of the 10-12 teams I talked to afterwards, all but one other took this strategy. Being a contrarian at heart, and remembering the ING think tank last month, I chose the other way and somewhat convinced the team to go along. We'll see today, but I suspect that there will be big fight for a handful of individuals and my Wall-mart, cheap and easy strategy will work (or I will have busted the bank, we'll see).
Most people were very conservative. They took this seriously and made no huge changes. We didn't either.
There was a trend in the HNWI data that, oddly, many of the HNWI strategy folks missed. HNW had a problem with non-performing loans, more so than mass market. This was surprising and we checked the data 4 or 5 times. We fixed this by raising minimum credit scores to 700 from 650 and then pouring some marketing money into it. Everyone else I talked to lowered this number. The way the sim works (I think), they will get a short term bump today, but then get hit hard on NPL tomorrow. We'll see.
No one took the "shoot the moon" strategy, i.e. no one liquidated all their branches and went totally online. Branches are a huge cost and the model would allow you to save huge by getting rid of them, but no one I talked to did. I hope today we find someone who did, I'd like to see how this pans out.
That's it. I'll update tomorrow, but the SimBank think is really a lot of fun and I'm learning shitloads about banking.
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
Brain Worms
Speaking of which, I am going into Lahey next Monday for about a week after which, hopefully, we'll have a final resolution for the brain worms thing. They're re-running everything from scratch and can compare it to the baselines last year.
Lots of problems are better (walking, swallowing) a few things are not as hot (I make faces now at random, I'm getting twitchier and, curiously for me, I'm getting a little emotional).
My working hypothesis is still some kind of metal poisoning, but I'll be relieved to get this done with and back to normal.
Lots of problems are better (walking, swallowing) a few things are not as hot (I make faces now at random, I'm getting twitchier and, curiously for me, I'm getting a little emotional).
My working hypothesis is still some kind of metal poisoning, but I'll be relieved to get this done with and back to normal.
Moving Day
We had our pre-move walkthrough last week. This is where the movers, in this case Grabel, comes through the house, estimates the load, looks for breakables etc. I was traveling that day, so Jim did the tour and confirmed with them that we wanted pickup on the 31st. We spent last weekend packing and getting things in order. On the way back from dinner I noticed the moving permit signs were not up for the following morning. Not good.
Sure enough, the next day, no movers arrived.
I finally got a hold of them around noon. Despite having told them 3 times, they didn't record when we were scheduled for pick up. "Oh we can do it later in the week.", said my breezily unaccountable rep. That's not good for me as I'll be traveling and I'm in Lahey most of next week. ugh.
While being a Problem, it's not quite yet a ClusterFuck.
Sure enough, the next day, no movers arrived.
I finally got a hold of them around noon. Despite having told them 3 times, they didn't record when we were scheduled for pick up. "Oh we can do it later in the week.", said my breezily unaccountable rep. That's not good for me as I'll be traveling and I'm in Lahey most of next week. ugh.
While being a Problem, it's not quite yet a ClusterFuck.
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
Also from FSM
I can't get my head around this quote:
"[Evolution] is not a fact . . . We're dealing with censorship here. If we only taught Shakespeare in English class, that wouldn't be fair."-- Senator Chris Buttars
So we should teach Shakespeare in ... gym?
"[Evolution] is not a fact . . . We're dealing with censorship here. If we only taught Shakespeare in English class, that wouldn't be fair."-- Senator Chris Buttars
So we should teach Shakespeare in ... gym?
Pirates!
The FSM knows global warming:
You may be interested to know that global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking numbers of Pirates since the 1800s. For your interest, I have included a graph of the approximate number of pirates versus the average global temperature over the last 200 years. As you can see, there is a statistically significant inverse relationship between pirates and global temperature.
The propsed explaination drew this response:
"It is a serious offense to mock God.",Mrs. Kathy Martin, District 6, Kansas State Board of Education
Technically, they are mocking you Mrs. Martin.
There is also this shameless bit of self-promotion:
WHY YOU SHOULD CONVERT TO FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTERISM
Flimsy moral standards.
Every friday is a relgious holiday. If your work/school objects to that, demand your religious beliefs are respected and threaten to call the ACLU.
Our heaven is WAY better. We've got a Stripper Factory AND a Beer Volcano.
You may be interested to know that global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking numbers of Pirates since the 1800s. For your interest, I have included a graph of the approximate number of pirates versus the average global temperature over the last 200 years. As you can see, there is a statistically significant inverse relationship between pirates and global temperature.
The propsed explaination drew this response:
"It is a serious offense to mock God.",Mrs. Kathy Martin, District 6, Kansas State Board of Education
Technically, they are mocking you Mrs. Martin.
There is also this shameless bit of self-promotion:
WHY YOU SHOULD CONVERT TO FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTERISM
Flimsy moral standards.
Every friday is a relgious holiday. If your work/school objects to that, demand your religious beliefs are respected and threaten to call the ACLU.
Our heaven is WAY better. We've got a Stripper Factory AND a Beer Volcano.
Monday, October 31, 2005
Futurama pi-K
The mathematics of Futurama.
and, of course, the Simpsons.
2. Lisa: Dad, as intelligence goes up, happiness often goes down. In fact, I made a graph! [She holds up a decreasing, concave upward graph on axes marked “intelligence” and “happiness”] Lisa: [sadly] I make a lot of graphs.
and, of course, the Simpsons.
2. Lisa: Dad, as intelligence goes up, happiness often goes down. In fact, I made a graph! [She holds up a decreasing, concave upward graph on axes marked “intelligence” and “happiness”] Lisa: [sadly] I make a lot of graphs.
250,000 superballs in San Francisco
via Boing Boing.
here
Geoff and I once released a dozen superballs into a parking strucuture in Altoona. This is exactly 20,833.3333 times better.
here
Geoff and I once released a dozen superballs into a parking strucuture in Altoona. This is exactly 20,833.3333 times better.
The Geometry of Pundits
...is not orthonormal. From the NYT today on the atmosphere in the White House
"People who tell you that having a scandal doesn't affect them have one, never been through it; two, are lying; or three, are idiots," Mr. Sosnik said.
"People who tell you that having a scandal doesn't affect them have one, never been through it; two, are lying; or three, are idiots," Mr. Sosnik said.
Climate Change News
Sometime back Travis had linked to the following as a catch-all explanation for why one should not believe in climate change data as relates to the Greenhouse Effect. All the recorded temperature change could be explained by variations in the solar cycle. I had a little free time today and thought I'd take a look at the paper. The graph above summerizes their findings.
It's quite a compelling chart.
It's also been completely refuted. While the authors of the refutation don't make a political judgment, they do show that the only arithmetic errors Friis-Christensen and Lassen make support their hypothesis and handle the rest correctly.
The revised chart without the errors fails to support their idea in any way.
Alastair G. W. Cameron, 80, Theorist on Creation of Moon, Dies
From the NYT:
Dr. Cameron's famous work, known as the giant impact theory, holds that a planet roughly the size of Mars struck Earth, sending fragments of Earth's mantle spinning into the atmosphere. The ring of space debris that resulted may have ultimately come together to form the Moon.
Dr. Cameron was a former associate director for planetary sciences at Harvard and was chairman of its astronomy department from 1976 to 1982.
He and others, principally William K. Hartmann of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, proposed the impact theory in the 1970's and developed it in later decades. The two scientists had been working independently on the idea when Dr. Hartmann presented his research at a meeting at Cornell in 1974.
The origin of the Moon has been a long standing problem in astrophysics. Lest you think it's been completely solved, there are still arguments about getting all the angular momentum balanced out from Cameron's theory.
Dr. Cameron's famous work, known as the giant impact theory, holds that a planet roughly the size of Mars struck Earth, sending fragments of Earth's mantle spinning into the atmosphere. The ring of space debris that resulted may have ultimately come together to form the Moon.
Dr. Cameron was a former associate director for planetary sciences at Harvard and was chairman of its astronomy department from 1976 to 1982.
He and others, principally William K. Hartmann of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, proposed the impact theory in the 1970's and developed it in later decades. The two scientists had been working independently on the idea when Dr. Hartmann presented his research at a meeting at Cornell in 1974.
The origin of the Moon has been a long standing problem in astrophysics. Lest you think it's been completely solved, there are still arguments about getting all the angular momentum balanced out from Cameron's theory.
Sunday, October 30, 2005
Ummm... That's What 'Coverup' Means David
I haven't posted anything on the Scooter indictment in part because I wanted to get my thoughts together and in part I wanted to see how things shake out.
I disagree in general with the celebratory mood over at Kos. This is not "Fitzmas" or some crazy thing, this is a potential tragedy and no American ought to be partying over this. If true, it means that the highest level of government conspired to mislead the American public and hide the evidence deep enough so that investigators could not find it.
I also disagree with the folks at National Review who seem to have taken up the "trivial perjury" talking points. Again, if true, there is nothing trivial about this.
I also can't quite figure out the mood at RedStates who seem to think this week was just a bad one and now they can get back to running the country into the ground. I think there is a lot of fall out yet to come and the elected GOP folks are going to try to get some distance from the president.
Then there is Volokh where the mood is sober, the discussion enlightened and the partisanship minimal. Quite refreshing.
Finally, there is this totally outer space piece by David Brooks today:
But he did not find evidence to prove that there was a broad conspiracy to out a covert agent for political gain. He did not find evidence of wide-ranging criminal behavior. He did not even indict the media's ordained villain, Karl Rove. And as the former prosecutors Robert Ray and Richard Ben-Veniste said on "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer," he gave little indication he was going to do that in the future.
I sent the following email to Mr. Brooks:
David,
You're missing the point. The point of the perjury and making false statements charges is that Mr. Libby has hidden any possible evidence well enough that the Justice Department couldn't find it. It doesn't mean, at this point, that evidence doesn't exist. Assuming Mr. Libby is cleared of these charges, one can then safely assume there was no crime.
Sometimes I can't believe I paid money to read his craptastic logic.
I disagree in general with the celebratory mood over at Kos. This is not "Fitzmas" or some crazy thing, this is a potential tragedy and no American ought to be partying over this. If true, it means that the highest level of government conspired to mislead the American public and hide the evidence deep enough so that investigators could not find it.
I also disagree with the folks at National Review who seem to have taken up the "trivial perjury" talking points. Again, if true, there is nothing trivial about this.
I also can't quite figure out the mood at RedStates who seem to think this week was just a bad one and now they can get back to running the country into the ground. I think there is a lot of fall out yet to come and the elected GOP folks are going to try to get some distance from the president.
Then there is Volokh where the mood is sober, the discussion enlightened and the partisanship minimal. Quite refreshing.
Finally, there is this totally outer space piece by David Brooks today:
But he did not find evidence to prove that there was a broad conspiracy to out a covert agent for political gain. He did not find evidence of wide-ranging criminal behavior. He did not even indict the media's ordained villain, Karl Rove. And as the former prosecutors Robert Ray and Richard Ben-Veniste said on "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer," he gave little indication he was going to do that in the future.
I sent the following email to Mr. Brooks:
David,
You're missing the point. The point of the perjury and making false statements charges is that Mr. Libby has hidden any possible evidence well enough that the Justice Department couldn't find it. It doesn't mean, at this point, that evidence doesn't exist. Assuming Mr. Libby is cleared of these charges, one can then safely assume there was no crime.
Sometimes I can't believe I paid money to read his craptastic logic.
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