Quote of the Day...

From a post by Neo-Neocon:

That has always been the danger of having a republic. Its success rests on the character and the understanding of its people, because if they stop learning and comprehending what makes us great and unique—are not taught it in the schools or in society at large, or lack the skills or the motivation to understand or to care—then we will lose it. And the funny thing about liberty is that it’s only then that people experience (up close and personal) how important it was, and how deeply they yearn for it.

Read the whole thing...

I yearn.

Hue Light Bulbs...

Former colleague, friend, and reader Doug S. says “Just got these and they are freakin (geekin) awesome!”  Yes, he really does talk that way :)  These Hue LED light bulbs (by Philips) can be set to any color in the spectrum and changed any time you'd like, through a smartphone app.  Awesome!  But a bit pricey – it helps to have a job in high tech and be a real estate mogul like Doug (he owns a significant fraction of Idaho)...

Red Sprite Lightning...

Red sprite lightning is a phenomenon that was long rumored, but only recently confirmed.  This is the only color photograph of it.  This sort of thing – phenomena hiding in plain sight – fascinate me.  There seems to be no end of unmade discoveries!  From APOD, of course...

The Dog and the Tornado...

This is but one of many stories emerging from the Oklahoma tornado tragedy, but this one is of particular interest to dog lovers.

What If...We Never Run Out of Oil?

Ocean-bottom methane hydrates offer that possibility.  Researchers are working hard on practical ways to “mine” the stuff.

So think about it.  What would change if we knew that we had an essentially infinite supply of naturally renewed hydrocarbon fuel?

• Environmentalists who are convinced that carbon dioxide is causing global warming will be horrified.
• The economic incentives for switching away from hydrocarbon fuels (still by far the most efficient way, by volume or by weight, that we know how to store energy) will be greatly reduced.  Unless, that is, government decides to distort the market with “carbon taxes” or some such thing.
• The oil-supported country economies (Saudi Arabia, Russia, Venezuela, Nigeria, etc.) will be sorely tested.
• Prices for most goods and many services (especially transportation) will fall.

Most of that sounds pretty good to me!

Update and bump: reader and friend Doug W. points out this marvelous quote from the above-linked article:

To ask utilities to take in large amounts of solar power—electricity generated by hundreds or thousands of small installations, many on neighborhood roofs and lawns, whose output is affected by clouds—is like asking a shipping firm to replace its huge, professionally staffed container ships with squadrons of canoes paddled by random adolescents.

Hah! Squadrons of canoes paddled by random adolescents :)

Sounds pretty good compared with the Obama administration and Congress, though, doesn't it? 

Book Review: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks...

Executive summary: excellent book; read it.

Henrietta Lacks was a black woman who died in 1951 – far too young, of cancer.  Her cells were sampled (without her knowledge or informed permission) and turned out to be immortal.  Such cells are incredibly useful for many different kinds of investigations and tests.  Researchers figured out how to grow her cells (dubbed “HeLa” cells) and soon they spread throughout the world of medical research.

That's an interesting bit of science history, and I can easily imagine someone writing a book about that.  That's not what Rebecca Skloot (the author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks) did.  In fact, science's use of HeLa cells isn't really detailed much at all in her book.  Instead, her book is mainly about the impact of HeLa cells on Henrietta Lacks' family – and Rebecca Skloot becomes a part of that story herself as she researches her book. 

I picked up this book thinking that it was going to be a sort of standard history of science book; a genre that I particularly like.  But instead it was something else altogether, something unlike any other book I've ever read.  Part science history, part human interest, part philosophy, and in places it reads like a novel.  I couldn't put the book down, and found much in it that provoked thought about the conflicts between medical research and human rights.  Some of these conflicts are avoidable, but others are, I suspect, intrinsic to the field. 

One helluva read, and I highly recommend it – despite the New York Times also recommending it :)

Understand How It Works...

Martin Rue writes about this simple piece of advice he got from his grandfather: “Understand how it works.”  Instead of just understanding what something does, understand how it does it.

This resonates strongly with me.  I've written before about my surprise that many programmers working today really have no idea at all how a computer actually works, and yet they can still write good software.  Lots of people know how to drive a car, but they haven't a clue what actually happens when they press on the gas pedal, or the brake, or turn the steering wheel.

I've noted that it is quite powerful, sometimes, to actually understand how something works.  Martin makes this point better than I have:

If you simply remember how to do something, then all you can do is use it the same way over and over, but if you understand how it works, you can reason about it. Once you can reason about something in your mind you can contemplate why it is the way it is, you can apply your entire creative mind to making the most of it, and you can implement and question improvement – you own it intellectually.

What he said.

Good or Evil?

Here's a very compact collection of statistical formulae, nicely organized and with almost no explanation.  I can't decide whether this is a great thing (a sort of “cheat sheet” for statistics) or if it's an evil thing (encouraging programmers to misuse tools they don't understand)...

Dolphins Find Antique Torpedo Off San Diego's Coast...

Dolphins trained by the U.S. Navy to locate sea mines (at the Pt. Loma facility) have located a Howell torpedo from the late 1800s (the only other known example is at right).

Awesome!

Sometimes We All Have a Day Like This...

Via reader Simi L.:

Cicada Periodicity...

Cicadas are currently emerging on the east coast of the U.S.  These are interesting large insects that I remember well from my childhood in New Jersey.  The North American species (called “periodical cicadas”) have a fascinating quirk: they breed in multi-year cycles of either 13 or 17 years.  They spend most of their lives underground, feeding from the roots of trees.  But every 13 or 17 years (depending on the group, or brood they belong to), they emerge, transform in the large flying insect pictured at right, and breed – thereby starting the next 13 or 17 year cycle.

If you're into math at all, you probably noted immediately that both 13 and 17 are prime numbers.  Is there are reason why those cycles are a prime number of years?  I've wondered that myself.

This morning I read about a hypothesis for this phenomenon.  If it's true that the cicada have multiple predators (that is, things that eat cicadas) whose populations vary cyclically (but independently), then it's provable that the best way for the cicadas to have a regular life cycle while minimizing the chances of being eaten is to have a life cycle that is a prime number of years long.  This, of course, would provide an evolutionary pressure giving the advantage to cicadas whose life cycles happened to be a prime number of years long.  After a few thousand generations, you'd get the situation we have today.

Awesome!

Steyn on Scandals...

Just go read it...

College Tuition Increases...

This article rants and raves about the cost of college tuition, which for the past 20 years or so has been rising much faster than inflation.  The author explores several possible reasons for the increase, but none of them are satisfyingly simple and obvious. 

There is such a reason, however: the fast ramp of college tuition almost exactly correlates with the easing of student loan availability.  Way back in the Cretaceous era when I was examining the possibility of going to college, there's no way that I could have gotten a student loan.  These days, thanks to numerous Federal and State programs, if you can fog a mirror and get admitted to any college, you can easily get a loan to pay not only your tuition, but your books and living expenses as well.

So why would that make college tuition increase?  Because the marketplace for college has been distorted by the government subsidies and guarantees in the student loan market – a student selecting a college no longer needs to worry so much about what it costs.  Because the loans are so easy to get, the only pricing pressure comes from a students deferred need to pay off the loan.  This greatly reduces the pressure on colleges and universities to keep their prices low, as the “buyers” not longer care so much about the price.  Instead, they are now motivated to spend more money to compete for student loans (the fact that a student comes along with the loan is just a cost of doing business for them, and a relatively minor one). 

This is yet another example of the government's intervention causing a huge distortion in the market.  Like the housing bubble, the taxpayers are going to be on the hook again – because a large fraction of all the trillions in student loans are guaranteed by some Federal program or another.  Of course “Federal guarantee” is just the polite way of saying “They're going to stick their hands in my pocket to steal the money”...

Slo-Mo Hummers...

This was taken in Los Angeles.  The two hummingbird species shown (Allen's and Anna's) are both native to us as well...

Reunited...

Marine Sgt. Ross Gundlach served in Afghanistan with Casey, a yellow lab trained as an explosives dog.  Sgt. Gundlach wanted to take care of Casey after she was retired, but she was assigned to the Iowa State Fire Marshal's office.  After pleading his case to the Fire Marshal's office, some state officials with a heart decided to make Sgt. Gundlach's dream come true.  They arranged a surprise reunion of Sgt. Gundlach and Casey, and now the two will be together permanently.

There's a government story that makes me feel good.  First time in a while...