A young girl came up to me in the parking lot this morning and asks, "Excuse me, sir, can I use your phone? I'm locked out of my car."
I said, "Sure. Is the car still running?"
She replied, "No. Fortunately I have my keys right here. But I think the battery in my unlocked died." She said this as she showed me the key fob.
When I took her keys and showed her how they unlock the car door, she gasped audibly out of shock. She had no idea that the ignition key for a car unlocked the door.
I wanted to show that girl a crank window so badly. That would have blown her friggin' mind!
Sunday, December 16, 2012
The Key...
Seen on Facebook:
AGW Watch: Leaked IPCC Report Admits Solar Forcing and No Recent Warming...
The IPCC is in the midst of its process for finalizing and releasing AR5, its next report on anthropogenic global warming. Alec Rawls is one of the IPCC “expert reviewers”, and he decided to break his confidentiality agreement with the IPCC and released the working draft. You can read all about his reasons, and download the working draft itself, from Mr. Watts wonderful site WUWT.
I know of two big pieces of news in the leaked report, though I'm sure there will be more, as more people get to chew on the data. The first one is illustrated in the graph (from the report!) at right: the IPCC is itself reporting that observed temperatures have not trended upwards since the late '90s, in direct contrast to the upward trends predicted by all of the IPCC's climate models. Skeptics have been reporting this for five years, and until now the IPCC has been denying it.
Probably even more relevant, though, is the discussions in the draft report about solar forcing. The IPCC scientists (some of them, at least) are reporting strong evidence for amplified solar forcing, even though they don't know the mechanism. This is precisely what many skeptical scientists have been saying for years: that there is strong evidence that climate variations are caused (in large part, anyway) by variations in solar radiance. Much of the evidence is observational: high correlation between solar radiance and global temperature. Some is experimental, most especially the recent experiments (and related observations) about solar wind, cosmic rays, and cloud seeding. The IPCC has heretofore resolutely denied that solar forcing was playing any part at all in climate change – this represents a radical revision of that position.
This is the first time a draft IPCC report has been leaked. The first thought I had upon reading the news (and the report) was this: has this same sort of information been in prior reports, but then removed before publication? That would be precisely the sort of thing a corrupt science bureaucracy would do to protect its own funding...
Sandy Hook...
Twenty innocent little kids (and six adults) killed in a horrifying way by an armed nut case. The killer's mother murdered. The killer committing suicide. We've seen this movie before, and all too often.
Our minds recoil in horror. We try to imagine what it must have been like to be one of those victims...and what it is like to be a survivor or someone who loved one of the victims. It's terrifying, and more terrifying the more we think about it. We wonder what the reasons might be. And we see this latest mass murder as part of a pattern of increasing incidence, increasing danger.
On that last point: we're mostly wrong about the pattern of increasing incidence (though there's one small way in which we're right). There are four main things that contribute to our mistaken pattern detection:
There is one actual increase in mass murders that I'm aware of, albeit one that's nearly impossible to measure (though its effect can't be very large, as the overall statistics show little increase in the mass murder rate over the past 200 years). In the 1950s there was a broad push in many countries to stop the practice of committing and institutionalizing the mentally ill. In the U.S., this culminated with the Community Mental Health Centers Act in 1963, which banned the practice of institutionalization except for very specific cases where the mentally ill person was a clear and present danger to themselves or others. Before this act went into effect, it was relatively easy for a family (generally with the cooperation of their family doctor) to commit a mentally ill person to an institution for life. After the act went into effect, commitments to a mental institution were difficult and revocable (in fact, regularly reviewed). As a very direct result of this act, tens of thousands of mentally ill people who would have been institutionalized under the old system are now as free as everyone else. Some of these people, one must presume, are amongst the perpetrators of mass murders since 1963.
However, we must be very careful contemplating this – and I want to be perfectly clear that I am not advocating a return to easy commitment. First of all, the previous system was demonstrably rife with gross miscarriages of justice – people who were merely inconvenient to their families, and not mentally ill at all, were committed to a life sentence in those institutions. Such abuse proved impossible to stop; it was just too tempting for the unscrupulous and evil. Secondly, it's demonstrable that many of our modern mass murders would never have been committed, even under the previous system. We often hear, with famous hindsight, that the perpetrators were “odd” – but that's very different than saying that they were sufficiently odd or disturbed that they would have been committed. The vast majority of the time these perpetrators surprise those who knew them best.
It's no comfort to know that the rate of mass murders isn't actually dramatically increasing. But maybe it will help us organize our fears a little better. You (and your children) are vastly more likely to die of a car “accident”, lightning strike, bee sting, or cancer than as the victim of a mass murderer...
Our minds recoil in horror. We try to imagine what it must have been like to be one of those victims...and what it is like to be a survivor or someone who loved one of the victims. It's terrifying, and more terrifying the more we think about it. We wonder what the reasons might be. And we see this latest mass murder as part of a pattern of increasing incidence, increasing danger.
On that last point: we're mostly wrong about the pattern of increasing incidence (though there's one small way in which we're right). There are four main things that contribute to our mistaken pattern detection:
- We're hard-wired to detect patterns. Our brains can largely be thought of as pattern-detection machines, highly evolved to see patterns like threats and sources of food. This pattern detection is completely subconscious; we can neither control or perceive it. It's a nearly universal part of our daily experience: it lets us recognize faces, detect odors of rotten foods, see birds in the forest, hear one voice in a noisy room, and so on. It's also a famously error-prone ability: we constantly perceive patterns where there are none at all. One very clear and famous example has almost been rendered obsolete by technology - remember the “static” you'd see on the screen of an old-fashioned TV set? Anyone who sits and stares at such a screen for a few minutes will think they see movement on the screen – a pattern in the noise. In fact, careful measurement by scientists shows that there is no such movement. It's our over-active pattern detector at work again, trying hard to find patterns amongst the noise. In the case of mass murders, our pattern detector is also putting together recent memorable events (more on that below) to make a pattern – but examined objectively, that pattern is just barely there (see the last point in this post).
- Proximity bias. This is a very well-known perception bias: we remember the things most proximate to us (in either space or time) much better than the things far away. Both space and time apply to our perception of mass murders. How many Americans are aware of the mass murders that occurred in, say, India (and there were many)? We might even have heard about some of them on the news, but they're far away so we don't remember then nearly as well as those that occur close to home. More relevant here, though, is that we don't remember mass murders that happened in the past as well as the ones that happened more recently – even those that occurred in our own lifetime. People of my age (60) will immediately remember Sandy Hook, Columbine, Gabby Giffords, etc. – but do you remember the Texas Clock Tower shootings, and the Chicago Student Nurse House murders? Or how about a little further back in time, to 1927 and the Bath School Disaster in which a bomber killed 38 school children and 7 adults (the worst mass murder of children in U.S. history)? These older mass murders don't hold the prominence in our minds that the more recent ones do, and they aren't being considered by our subconscious pattern detection.
- Absolute vs relative numbers. This is another perceptual bias, and one that is particularly difficult for many people to wrestle with. In the year 2000 there were about 4 times as many mass murders in the world as there were in the year 1900 – the absolute number of mass murders went up by 400%. Many people would look at that fact and say to themselves “See, there are more mass murders today!” But combine this with the fact that the world's population increased by the same amount (from 1.6 billion to 6.4 billion, or 400%) and you get a different picture. The rate of mass murders per capita (the relative number of mass murders) didn't increase at all.
- Instantaneous worldwide reporting. This is an artifact of the electronic age we live in. In the U.S., we heard about the murders committed by Anders Breivik at the same time the Norweigans did, thanks to the pervasive nature of TV and the Internet. We all saw the same photos and videos, and at nearly the same time. Not so many years ago, it would be days before we heard about the incident, if we heard about it at all. It certainly would not have been top of the news cycle for days on end. This phenomenon of “connectedness” that is now nearly worldwide means that we're much more likely to be aware of contemporary mass murders than we would of those that occurred earlier within our own lifetime.
There is one actual increase in mass murders that I'm aware of, albeit one that's nearly impossible to measure (though its effect can't be very large, as the overall statistics show little increase in the mass murder rate over the past 200 years). In the 1950s there was a broad push in many countries to stop the practice of committing and institutionalizing the mentally ill. In the U.S., this culminated with the Community Mental Health Centers Act in 1963, which banned the practice of institutionalization except for very specific cases where the mentally ill person was a clear and present danger to themselves or others. Before this act went into effect, it was relatively easy for a family (generally with the cooperation of their family doctor) to commit a mentally ill person to an institution for life. After the act went into effect, commitments to a mental institution were difficult and revocable (in fact, regularly reviewed). As a very direct result of this act, tens of thousands of mentally ill people who would have been institutionalized under the old system are now as free as everyone else. Some of these people, one must presume, are amongst the perpetrators of mass murders since 1963.
However, we must be very careful contemplating this – and I want to be perfectly clear that I am not advocating a return to easy commitment. First of all, the previous system was demonstrably rife with gross miscarriages of justice – people who were merely inconvenient to their families, and not mentally ill at all, were committed to a life sentence in those institutions. Such abuse proved impossible to stop; it was just too tempting for the unscrupulous and evil. Secondly, it's demonstrable that many of our modern mass murders would never have been committed, even under the previous system. We often hear, with famous hindsight, that the perpetrators were “odd” – but that's very different than saying that they were sufficiently odd or disturbed that they would have been committed. The vast majority of the time these perpetrators surprise those who knew them best.
It's no comfort to know that the rate of mass murders isn't actually dramatically increasing. But maybe it will help us organize our fears a little better. You (and your children) are vastly more likely to die of a car “accident”, lightning strike, bee sting, or cancer than as the victim of a mass murderer...
Friday, December 14, 2012
Mathematics and Programming...
Is knowledge of mathematics necessary – or even useful – for a programmer? That's a long-standing debate, with bazillions of threads on usenet groups and blogs. Evan Miller has some interesting ramblings on the topic.
Speaking strictly for myself, there have been only a few occasions when I needed any mathematics more advanced than simple algebra to do the programming work that I've done. However...some of the most interesting and fun things I've done did involve some more advanced math. The ones that come right to mind include: network traffic analysis and management (probability, statistics, sampling theory), teletype FSK modems (Fourier transforms and information theory), bond valuation (Monte Carlo statistical modeling), classic optic design, software servos (control optimization), astronomical and geographic calculations (can you spell spherical trigonometry?), algorithmic trading (big data analysis, pattern matching), and cryptography (really big numbers, modulo math, and trap functions). For all of these programming jobs, I really could not have done the job without having learned some new mathematics. Because I had only a high school education, all of these areas of math were new to me when I first encountered the need. And for whatever reason, in each case I thought the need to learn these was a lot of fun. Still, the programming that I've done that required this math forms only a small fraction of the total body of programming work I've done.
I don't know where that puts me in this debate :-)
Speaking strictly for myself, there have been only a few occasions when I needed any mathematics more advanced than simple algebra to do the programming work that I've done. However...some of the most interesting and fun things I've done did involve some more advanced math. The ones that come right to mind include: network traffic analysis and management (probability, statistics, sampling theory), teletype FSK modems (Fourier transforms and information theory), bond valuation (Monte Carlo statistical modeling), classic optic design, software servos (control optimization), astronomical and geographic calculations (can you spell spherical trigonometry?), algorithmic trading (big data analysis, pattern matching), and cryptography (really big numbers, modulo math, and trap functions). For all of these programming jobs, I really could not have done the job without having learned some new mathematics. Because I had only a high school education, all of these areas of math were new to me when I first encountered the need. And for whatever reason, in each case I thought the need to learn these was a lot of fun. Still, the programming that I've done that required this math forms only a small fraction of the total body of programming work I've done.
I don't know where that puts me in this debate :-)
First Measurement of c...
In physics, c is the speed of light. That's a very fast speed indeed, roughly 310,000 km/s (or 186,000 miles/s). How and when was it first measured?
This is a piece of science history I'm very familiar with, but you may not be. It's very clever how it was done – in 1676! Dutch astronomer Ole Rømer made the measurements and Dutch mathemetician and astronomer Christaan Huygens did the arithmetic. They came up with a value of 218,000 km/s (or 131,000 miles/s) – not bad at all considering the state of scientific measurement almost 500 years ago!
This is a piece of science history I'm very familiar with, but you may not be. It's very clever how it was done – in 1676! Dutch astronomer Ole Rømer made the measurements and Dutch mathemetician and astronomer Christaan Huygens did the arithmetic. They came up with a value of 218,000 km/s (or 131,000 miles/s) – not bad at all considering the state of scientific measurement almost 500 years ago!
Earthquake Captured!
This is the first seismogram I've ever actually tried to read. I found several articles about reading them; this was the most useful. If I'm understanding this correctly, I'm seeing the P-waves reaching us at about 10:36:46 UTC, or 44 seconds after the quake actually occurred. That works out to a speed of 305/44, or 6.93 km/s – fast for a P-wave. Then I'm seeing the S-waves reaching us at about 10:37:17 UTC, or 75 seconds after the quake actually occurred. That works out to a speed of 4.07 km/s – again fast for an S-wave. From what I've been reading, these seismograms are very challenging to extract good information from – both the amplitude and the timing of them are highly dependent on the geologic structures and material types between the earthquake and the seismometer. I think I'll leave that to the experts :-)
But I do think it's kind of cool to be able to see the earthquake on an instrument in my house!
Entitlement Reform...
Via reader, colleague, and friend Doug S. This is gonna give my mom some ideas. She'll have one big problem, though: how to get her list down to just four...
Rain!
And the forecast is for more rain, through Sunday. Woo hoo!
The narcissus are in bloom in our yard – they seem to think it's springtime...
Thursday, December 13, 2012
The Impact of Regulation...
Over at The Spirit of Enterprise there's a great post that points to this article about the impact of regulation on jobs. The post makes this point:
In the realm of government schools, we can hire teachers to teach children effectively in the classroom, or we can hire more administrative staff to make sure that the school complies with ever greater regulation. Both would put wages in the economy that would then be spent on food, but only the first has the delightful knock-on effect of teaching others how to create more wealth. The spent wages of the administrators add little or no value until they land in the hands of somebody else who will create wealth with them.Yup, I get it. Damned few politicians – on either side of the aisle – have any clue at all, though. Or they just don't care, as the regulation devolves to their immediate political benefit, and that's their only consideration.
In the private sector, we can hire an engineer to design a new medical device, or an internal auditor to support our "internal controls" assessment required under Sarbanes-Oxley. We can add a programmer to improve our service to our customers and perhaps lower their own compliance costs, or an accountant to track the tax attributes of every product we sell.
You get the point.
When Even a Liberal Can See It Isn't Working...
...then maybe we can all agree that welfare still needs reforming.
What am I thinking? The progressives will never see reality...
What am I thinking? The progressives will never see reality...
Means Testing for Social Security and Medicare?
Some time ago I read about one of the methods being considered to reform entitlements (specifically, Social Security and Medicare): “means testing”. That's fancy economist-lingo for this: don't give Social Security or Medicare benefits to people who have enough money to pay for their own retirement (and their own medical care while retired).
I suspect most people would have a reaction something like this: “Well, that sounds fair, so long as they don't mean me!” My own reaction was a little different: over the years of my employment (I'm 60, and about to retire) I have had hundreds of thousands of dollars forcibly removed from my paycheck to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes. I was told by many sources, not least of which was the IRS, that those dollars would help fund my own retirement. It's likely that if means testing for Social Security and Medicare is enacted, our assets in retirement would exceed the means testing threshold – so I would get none of these benefits at all, nor would my wife.
I have a lot of trouble with the word “fair”. I'm not really sure what it means, in this context or in many others. It's a very subjective term. I have a much more objective complaint: in effect, the U.S. government made a contract with me. They said that if I paid these two taxes, as I have, then I would be entitled to Social Security and Medicare benefits in my dotage. These discussions about taking those benefits away sound to me like pseudo-sophisticated arguments for straight-up theft – the bureaucrats would like to take the benefits that I paid for and give them to someone else who didn't pay for them. Highway robbery. Classic redistribution of wealth. Fair? Who gives a shit? They're proposing to rob me!
And that's on top of the higher taxes they're about to impose on me...
Peggy Noonan and Mickey Kaus have other thoughts...
I suspect most people would have a reaction something like this: “Well, that sounds fair, so long as they don't mean me!” My own reaction was a little different: over the years of my employment (I'm 60, and about to retire) I have had hundreds of thousands of dollars forcibly removed from my paycheck to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes. I was told by many sources, not least of which was the IRS, that those dollars would help fund my own retirement. It's likely that if means testing for Social Security and Medicare is enacted, our assets in retirement would exceed the means testing threshold – so I would get none of these benefits at all, nor would my wife.
I have a lot of trouble with the word “fair”. I'm not really sure what it means, in this context or in many others. It's a very subjective term. I have a much more objective complaint: in effect, the U.S. government made a contract with me. They said that if I paid these two taxes, as I have, then I would be entitled to Social Security and Medicare benefits in my dotage. These discussions about taking those benefits away sound to me like pseudo-sophisticated arguments for straight-up theft – the bureaucrats would like to take the benefits that I paid for and give them to someone else who didn't pay for them. Highway robbery. Classic redistribution of wealth. Fair? Who gives a shit? They're proposing to rob me!
And that's on top of the higher taxes they're about to impose on me...
Peggy Noonan and Mickey Kaus have other thoughts...
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Curiosity: Update...
Finally, there's a new stereo view (an anaglyph, full resolution) that's amongst the best yet to emerge from Curiosity's travels. The dark spot near the center foreground is the location of some digging that Curiosity did. If you've got a pair of red/blue glasses, slap 'em on and treat yourself to a 3D view of the surface of Mars. It's something straight out of the science fiction of my youth:
36.79%
Suppose you have an opening for a secretary (does anyone actually have secretaries any more?). Further suppose that 100 people have applied for the job. You're the only one who can interview them, but you have conflicting goals: you would like to choose the very best candidate for the job, but you would like to interview as few of the candidates as possible. What's your best strategy?
It turns out to be the following:
Go read Nick Berry (at DataGenetics) as he proves it...
It turns out to be the following:
- Interview 37 (36.79% of 100), rating them as objectively as possible and giving each candidate a score.
- Remember the score of the candidate who ranked highest.
- Keep interviewing candidates, but hire the first one you find who ranks higher than the previous highest candidate.
Go read Nick Berry (at DataGenetics) as he proves it...
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Ada Lovelace and Note G...
Christian Hansen has the last of his series on Babbage's Analytical Engine posted. I've enjoyed his series; I'm sorry to see the end of it. In this post, he nicely explains Lovelace's proposed program for computing the Bernoulli series – and he debug's her program (which, alas, was never able to be actually run on Babbage's Analytical Engine, because it was never actually completed)...
What Career Paths Do Majors in “X” Take?
Here's a nicely done interactive infographic that lets you explore this interesting question. You can also explore the inverse: what majors end up in a given career?
What it shows for computer science majors is fascinating, and a bit of a surprise for me: they end up in all sorts of careers, with far less than a majority ending up in technology. On the other hand, it shows that people in technology careers may have majored in just about anything (or, like me, nothing at all!), with jibes with my own experience quite well...
What it shows for computer science majors is fascinating, and a bit of a surprise for me: they end up in all sorts of careers, with far less than a majority ending up in technology. On the other hand, it shows that people in technology careers may have majored in just about anything (or, like me, nothing at all!), with jibes with my own experience quite well...
If Google Was Around in the '60s...
...what might it have looked like? Here's a very cool interactive animation that old fogeys like me and the young 'uns will both enjoy – though most likely for very different reasons...
A Little Fact Checking...
This article caught my eye this morning. It claims that there's a new market for point-to-point microwave links based on the fact that they're significantly faster than fiber optic connections. By faster they mean latency (how long a message takes to get from sender to receiver), not bandwidth (how fast the content of a message takes to transmit). The customer in this market is the high frequency trading world (aka “algorithmic trading”).
The need for low latency amongst high frequency traders makes perfect sense. Once an electronic order arrives at an exchange, the actual trade can happen in less than a millisecond. But does a microwave link actually have a significantly lower latency than a fiber optic link?
The article cites two factors that make microwave links faster:
So let's do some math on the big market cited by the article: connections for traders in Chicago who are trading on a New York exchange. The direct distance between Chicago and New York is about 1,150 kilometers. Here's our math for each approach.
Fiber optic:
distance = 1,150 x 1.3 (routing length factor) = 1,495 km
latency = 1,495 / 200,000 = 7.45 ms
repeaters = 2 (every 500 km) @ 0.2 ms = 0.4 ms
total latency = 7.85 ms
Microwave
distance = 1,150 x 1.05 (routing length factor) = 1,207 km
latency = 1,207 / 300,000 = 4.03 ms
repeaters = 4 (every 250 km) @ 0.2 ms = 0.6 ms
total latency = 4.63 ms
Microwave beats fiber by 3.22 ms, one way - over three times the trading latency. Yup, that's significant.
But there's one way to make this much, much lower latency, which the article doesn't mention at all – and it's the most common way by far: locate the high frequency trading servers physically nearby the exchange servers. The electronic exchanges all offer (very expensive!) rack space in or near their datacenters for exactly this purpose...
The need for low latency amongst high frequency traders makes perfect sense. Once an electronic order arrives at an exchange, the actual trade can happen in less than a millisecond. But does a microwave link actually have a significantly lower latency than a fiber optic link?
The article cites two factors that make microwave links faster:
- The speed of light in air is about 300,000 km/sec, but in fiber is about 200,000 km/sec.
- The route of microwave links tends to be more direct than fiber routes, which usually follow the right-of-way alongside railroads or highways.
So let's do some math on the big market cited by the article: connections for traders in Chicago who are trading on a New York exchange. The direct distance between Chicago and New York is about 1,150 kilometers. Here's our math for each approach.
Fiber optic:
distance = 1,150 x 1.3 (routing length factor) = 1,495 km
latency = 1,495 / 200,000 = 7.45 ms
repeaters = 2 (every 500 km) @ 0.2 ms = 0.4 ms
total latency = 7.85 ms
Microwave
distance = 1,150 x 1.05 (routing length factor) = 1,207 km
latency = 1,207 / 300,000 = 4.03 ms
repeaters = 4 (every 250 km) @ 0.2 ms = 0.6 ms
total latency = 4.63 ms
Microwave beats fiber by 3.22 ms, one way - over three times the trading latency. Yup, that's significant.
But there's one way to make this much, much lower latency, which the article doesn't mention at all – and it's the most common way by far: locate the high frequency trading servers physically nearby the exchange servers. The electronic exchanges all offer (very expensive!) rack space in or near their datacenters for exactly this purpose...
Monday, December 10, 2012
Sunday, December 9, 2012
How to Spot a Bureaucrat Who Needs to be Fired...
I'll give you two answers:
Rope
Tree
Bureaucrat
Some assembly required
- (only slightly facetious): Any bureaucrat you spot.
- (more seriously): Any bureaucrat who thinks that borrowing $2.5 million under terms that required over $35 million is a “good deal”. And that's not even the worst example! Oh, and the examples are from California, of course. And it's so bad that even NPR is reporting it! I originally heard this on the radio (I listen so my readers don't have to), and almost drove off the road in shock...
Rope
Tree
Bureaucrat
Some assembly required
Awesome!
Today's Dilbert strip made me laugh out loud:
Love the twin snorks :)
Management often makes themselves easy to lampoon, but still ... Scott Adams somehow always manages to get engineering's perspective across in a way that anyone (in or out of engineering) can understand...
Love the twin snorks :)
Management often makes themselves easy to lampoon, but still ... Scott Adams somehow always manages to get engineering's perspective across in a way that anyone (in or out of engineering) can understand...
Java Geek...
Just over five years ago, I started working at ServiceNow. Now I'm in the process of transitioning out, as I'm retiring. That's “retiring” in the sense of not being formally employed – I certainly won't stop designing and building stuff.
Before I went to work at ServiceNow, I had been using a commercial Java IDE called IDEA, from JetBrains (that's their logo at right). I loved it in the way that any craftsman loves a fine tool. But the standard at ServiceNow is the open source Eclipse IDE, which is awesome in its own different way. I found Eclipse to be just fine as an IDE, but I didn't get the same pleasure from using it that I did with IDEA.
So yesterday I bought IDEA and started using it again, for the first time in five years. That's enough time that my “muscle memory” had completely forgotten it, and I'm relearning it from scratch. But I can tell you already that it has gotten better in the past five years – much better. It has also kept up with all the latest dohickeys and whatnots, so (for example) it now directly supports git and GitHub and Maven and so on. The code inspection and intention features made me smile as I worked – IDEA seems to always know what I'm about to do, and gives me a simple way to avoid having to type it. It's awesome! And it's very good to have my fine tool back again...
So yesterday I bought IDEA and started using it again, for the first time in five years. That's enough time that my “muscle memory” had completely forgotten it, and I'm relearning it from scratch. But I can tell you already that it has gotten better in the past five years – much better. It has also kept up with all the latest dohickeys and whatnots, so (for example) it now directly supports git and GitHub and Maven and so on. The code inspection and intention features made me smile as I worked – IDEA seems to always know what I'm about to do, and gives me a simple way to avoid having to type it. It's awesome! And it's very good to have my fine tool back again...
Saturday, December 8, 2012
A Parable...
Via my mom:
JESUS AND THE DEMOCRAT
A Republican, in a wheelchair, entered a restaurant one afternoon and asked the waitress for a cup of coffee. The Republican looked across the restaurant and asked, "Is that Jesus sitting over there?"
The waitress nodded "yes," so the Republican requested that she give Jesus a cup of coffee, on him.
The next patron to come in was a Libertarian, with a hunched back. He shuffled over to a booth, painfully sat down, and asked the waitress for a cup of hot tea. He also glanced across the restaurant and asked, "Is that Jesus, over there?"
The waitress nodded, so the Libertarian asked her to give Jesus a cup of hot tea, "My treat."
The third patron to come into the restaurant was a Democrat on crutches. He hobbled over to a booth, sat down, and hollered, "Hey there honey! How's about getting me a cold mug of Miller Light?" He too looked across the restaurant and asked, "Isn't that God's boy over there?"
The waitress nodded, so the Democrat directed her to give Jesus a cold beer. "On my bill," he said loudly.
As Jesus got up to leave, he passed by the Republican, touched him, and said, "For your kindness, you are healed." The Republican felt the strength come back into his legs, got up, and danced a jig out the door.
Jesus passed by the Libertarian, touched him, and said, "For your kindness, you are healed." The Libertarian felt his back straightening up, and he raised his hands, praised the Lord, and did a series of back flips out the door.
Then, Jesus walked towards the Democrat, just smiling.
The Democrat jumped up and yelled, "Don't touch me ... I'm on disability."
ResMed Leaving California?
Via reader and friend Simon M.:
As Simon says, “Bet we see more of this...”
ResMed Inc., one of San Diego’s largest medical device companies, is evaluating whether it should move its headquarters outside of California.Read the whole thing.
ResMed CEO Peter C. Farrell cited California’s tax increases, strengthening union presence, strict regulations and the Democratic majority in the state Legislature as reasons the company is looking elsewhere. The company posted revenue of more than $1 billion last year.
As Simon says, “Bet we see more of this...”
Friday, December 7, 2012
Real Places...
Bombs on London...
In WWII, that is. Here's an amazing interactive map showing the exact location of every bomb that struck in the London area during the Blitz.
It was quite sobering to look at the areas I'm most familiar with, such as Richmond and Kew Gardens. I've walked over or by quite a few of these bombed locations, but never knew it...
It was quite sobering to look at the areas I'm most familiar with, such as Richmond and Kew Gardens. I've walked over or by quite a few of these bombed locations, but never knew it...
Thursday, December 6, 2012
We're a 21st Century Couple...
...or something.
A few minutes ago, I'm in my home office, door closed, Christmas music playing loudly, and foot heater going full blast. Debbie is about 10 feet away, in our bedroom, doing her physical therapy exercises and watching a movie on her iPad. She spots one of our cats (Maka Lea, our little physiologically challenged fellow) stuck in the bedroom. He wants to get into our livingroom, but he can't jump over our dog gate. Debbie can't easily get him there in her current state. She wants to get my attention. How does she do it?
She emails me.
A few minutes ago, I'm in my home office, door closed, Christmas music playing loudly, and foot heater going full blast. Debbie is about 10 feet away, in our bedroom, doing her physical therapy exercises and watching a movie on her iPad. She spots one of our cats (Maka Lea, our little physiologically challenged fellow) stuck in the bedroom. He wants to get into our livingroom, but he can't jump over our dog gate. Debbie can't easily get him there in her current state. She wants to get my attention. How does she do it?
She emails me.
Our Moon?!?!
Did some kid run amok on the moon with a set of different colored paints? What is this?
This particular image shows the thickness of the lunar crust around the entire surface of the moon. The data to create this image came from NASA's GRAIL satellites, delightfully named Ebb and Flow, which measure the gravitational field of the moon with unprecedented resolution and precision. The crustal thickness map is just one of many results from the mission. More here and here...
This particular image shows the thickness of the lunar crust around the entire surface of the moon. The data to create this image came from NASA's GRAIL satellites, delightfully named Ebb and Flow, which measure the gravitational field of the moon with unprecedented resolution and precision. The crustal thickness map is just one of many results from the mission. More here and here...
Earth at Night...
NASA has posted some beautiful composite photos and movies made by the Earth Observatory satellite, showing the night sky of Earth. It took me several tries to download the movie; I suspect the site is overloaded as this has gotten wide distribution. As usual, you can use the brightness of any given area as a proxy for human wealth – check out North Korea, Yemen, and Mali to see what impoverished areas look like.
Corruption Perceptions...
Transparency International has released their Corruption Perceptions Index for 2012, complete with a lovely interactive infographic (snapshot below). There really aren't any surprises for the bad guys: North Korea, Afghanistan, Somalia, Venezuela, etc. The good guys list is surprising mainly for which countries are not on the list: U.S., Britain, Germany, and Japan.
Is This What Obama Is Hiding?
The terrorists who killed our ambassador to Libya and three others were using weapons provided by the U.S.
I don't have the words...
I don't have the words...
Stock Market Manipulation...
One of the many things I learned while working in the electronic stock trading industry was just how common – and easy – stock market manipulation is. Some forms of manipulation are illegal, and some are actually completely legal. One of the illegal forms of manipulation is the practice of making trades solely for the purpose of raising a company's apparent market capitalization (“market cap”).
The Wall Street Journal has an excellent and detailed analysis of how this works, complete with real world examples. This particular form of market manipulation leverages one of the odd customs of the fund management world: the determination of a fund's value by using the closing price of the stocks it holds. The closing price is simply the price of the last trade of any given trading day. For stocks that trade thinly (that is, not many trades during any given day), it's not hard to arrange for your trade to be the last trade of the day – all you need is the cooperation of someone who holds the stock and is willing to sell it to you for an above-market price – and for you to buy it at that price. This needn't even involve much money, as a trade of even a single share will still set the closing price.
This particular market manipulation could be eliminated quite simply, by changing the basis for fund valuation from closing price to a weighted average price. I've seen this proposed on several occasions, but I have no idea why this hasn't happened...
The Wall Street Journal has an excellent and detailed analysis of how this works, complete with real world examples. This particular form of market manipulation leverages one of the odd customs of the fund management world: the determination of a fund's value by using the closing price of the stocks it holds. The closing price is simply the price of the last trade of any given trading day. For stocks that trade thinly (that is, not many trades during any given day), it's not hard to arrange for your trade to be the last trade of the day – all you need is the cooperation of someone who holds the stock and is willing to sell it to you for an above-market price – and for you to buy it at that price. This needn't even involve much money, as a trade of even a single share will still set the closing price.
This particular market manipulation could be eliminated quite simply, by changing the basis for fund valuation from closing price to a weighted average price. I've seen this proposed on several occasions, but I have no idea why this hasn't happened...
Curiosity Is On the Move!
How To Live With an Introvert...
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Invalid Update...
Both Debbie and Mo'i are doing fine. Debbie is pushing to get more range of motion (especially flexion). She's up and about much more now than even just a week ago. Being stuck in the house is driving her crazy (I know, short drive :-). Mo'i is likewise doing fine. His behavior is completely back to normal. He's loving his 4 or 5 times a day chicken-and-rice diet :-)...
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Tax Burden Changes...
The New York Times has an interesting article (with graphs) about how the total tax burden has changed over the years for people in different income ranges. It suffers from one very significant flaw, the same flaw that nearly every analysis from the progressive side shares: it completely ignores the way that tax deductions, exemptions, and credits have changed over the years. Include those, and this picture changes dramatically. Leave them out, as the NYT did, and you make a solid-looking argument for raising taxes on higher-income folks.
This article has already been cited over 1,000 times in the online media. You can be sure it will be the foundational reference for the argument to raise taxes.
Doom. I smell doom...
This article has already been cited over 1,000 times in the online media. You can be sure it will be the foundational reference for the argument to raise taxes.
Doom. I smell doom...
Monday, December 3, 2012
Fishing With Hand Grenades...
Now here are a couple of candidates for a Darwin award! Via reader Simi L.:
A Distribution...
What he found is in the graph at right: a classic logarithmically decaying curve, with a few glitches on it. With some thought, you might be unsurprised by the log decay. Most people wouldn't worry about the glitches – who knows what would cause them? Not Nick Berry – with some help from a reader, he figured them all out...
Sunday, December 2, 2012
Mo'i Update...
Shortly after arriving, the vet tech brought Mo'i out to see me. Oh, man, he looked good! Alert, happy to see me, tail wagging, giving me his customary “hug”. If I didn't know better, I wouldn't have known he'd just had a fairly major surgical procedure. The photo at upper right is Mo'i after returning home (in his “Elizabethan collar” so he doesn't chew his staples out)...
The post-operative care is simple in his case: no strenuous activity for a week or so, bland diet (boiled chicken and rice) and small frequent meals for a few days, and a couple of drugs. Nothing hard at all. In ten days or so, we'll get his staples out.
We drove home via the grocery store, to get Mo'i a nice pile of chicken thighs to boil up and mix with rice. Once home, he took a little walk, had a small meal, and drank (oddly, he didn't want water, so I mixed a little chicken-flavored “Gatorade for dogs” for him, and he loved that). Then we took a look at his wound (above left), which looks fine.
The fine folks at Animal ER were happy to make a CD with Mo'i's X-rays for me to take home. Below are the two X-rays showing his gastric volvutus so clearly that even I can tell that something is wrong. Note how the bloated stomach pushed other organs around – that must have been epically painful for the poor guy...
A Most British Observation...
I think I've posted this before, but I couldn't find it so...here it goes again (maybe). Via my cousin Mike D.:
The train was quite crowded, so a U. S. Marine walked the entire length looking for a seat, but the only seat left was taken by a well dressed, middle-aged, French woman's poodle.
The war-weary Marine asked, 'Ma'am, may I have that seat?'
The French woman just sniffed and said to no one in particular 'Americans are so rude. My little Fifi is using that seat.'
The Marine walked the entire train again, but the only seat left was under that dog. 'Please, ma'am. May I sit down? I'm very tired.'
She snorted, 'Not only are you Americans rude, you are also arrogant!'
This time the Marine didn't say a word; he just picked up the little dog, threw it out of the train window, and sat down.
The woman shrieked, 'Someone must defend my honour! This American should be put in his place!'
An English gentleman sitting nearby spoke up, 'Sir, you Americans often seem to have a penchant for doing the wrong thing. You hold the fork in the wrong hand. You drive your cars on the wrong side of the road. And now, sir, you seem to have thrown the wrong bitch out of the window.'
Makers vs. Takers, 1 of 5,292,003...
Via my mom:
A union boss walks into a bar next door to the factory and is about to order a drink to celebrate Obama’s victory when he sees a guy close by wearing a Romney for President button with two beers in front of him. He doesn't have to be an Einstein to know that this guy is a Republican. So, he shouts over to the bartender so loudly that everyone can hear, "Drinks for everyone in here, bartender, but not for the Republican."
Soon after the drinks have been handed out, the Republican gives him a big smile, waves at him, then says, "Thank you!" in an equally loud voice. This infuriates the union boss.
So the union boss once again loudly orders drinks for everyone except the Republican. As before, this does not seem to bother the Republican. He continues to smile, and again yells, "Thank you!"
So just to make his point one more time, the union boss once again loudly orders drinks for everyone except the Republican. But, as before, this does not seem to bother the Republican. He continues to smile, and again yells, "Thank you!"
Frustrated, the union boss asks the bartender, "What the heck is the matter with that Republican? I've ordered three rounds of drinks for everyone in the bar but him, and all the silly joker does is smile and thank me. Is he nuts?"
"Nope," replies the bartender. "He owns the place."
Saturday, December 1, 2012
More on the Intrade Crackdown...
The Wall Street Journal agrees with me: the crackdown on Intrade is gross regulatory overreach.
Scary Story...But With a Happy Ending...
Mo'i is our second-oldest dog – a male field spaniel who has been part of our lives for fourteen years. He's a quiet, affectionate, and unflappable fellow. The one thing that gets him excited is food – anything he can force into his mouth and swallow makes him happy. We're not even sure what his favorite food is. He likes dog food, but he also likes tomatoes, onions, bananas, banana peels, and even...gravel. Yes, really – gravel. A couple times a year, while we're walking him, he'll go over to our little gravel pile and grab a mouthful of pea gravel and swallow it.
Mo'i has had more than his share of health issues. A few years ago, he had a splinter of bone fragment pressing against his spinal cord; that required some fancy surgery to fix. Unusually for a dog, he has high blood pressure (hypertension). More recently he's been struggling with skin problems (bacterial and fungal infections) that make him itch all over and smell funky. The last few weeks he's had a couple of “hot spots” where he's licked and bitten the hair off a patch of skin, so we've had him wearing the “cone of shame” to keep him from further injuring himself.
But through all these travails, there's been one constant: put food down, and Mo'i is all over it. When he figures out that we're about to feed them, Mo'i starts whimpering and even trembling in anticipation. At moments like that, all thought of his pain or discomfort go flying out the window, and Mo'i is all about one thing: food, food, food, FOOD!
So yesterday afternoon (at 3 pm) when I fed the dogs and Mo'i was completely disinterested, I knew something was badly wrong. That had, quite literally, never happened before – not in his entire life. There were a couple of other less alarming symptoms as well: he was listless, held his back slightly arched, and had is little stub of a tail held level and trembling – all odd for him. Debbie called our local vet; she was not in the office but another vet was covering for her, so Mo'i and I jumped in my car and away we went.
Before 4 pm the vet was examining Mo'i. The only thing clearly wrong that he saw were his bright red gums – something possibly associated with Mo'i's hypertension. With nothing else to go on, the vet thought that Mo'i's symptoms were most likely caused by something related to his hypertension, and quite likely not something acute. Our local vet doesn't have the specialized sphygmomanometer needed for dogs, so he thought it might be a good idea to take Mo'i to the Animal ER in Kearny Mesa (40 miles or so away) where they did have a sphygmomanometer to get that blood pressure checked. He didn't think it was urgently necessary to take Mo'i up, and waiting until Monday would probably be ok as well.
Ordinarily this is the sort of thing that Debbie and I would decide together, as she'd be right there with me. But with Debbie laid up with her busted-up knee, I was down at the vet's on my own. It's the kind of tradeoff decision that pet owners agonize over – do we put our pet through the low-grade trauma of further tests and travel, spend the money and time? Is it actually necessary? Vets (like doctors) generally don't give clear-cut advice in such matters, but the vibes I was getting from this vet were “this isn't all that urgent”. On the other hand, the fact that Mo'i wouldn't eat was really sticking in my head – knowing Mo'i, that felt like a loud scream for help.
So I decided to take him to Animal ER. Mo'i and I loaded ourselves back into our ancient LandCruiser, I gassed up, and away we went. Animal ER didn't even open until 6 pm, so I thought I had plenty of time to get there – but it was raining, and the San Diego freeways were slick, and the traffic was horrible. I didn't make it up there until just before 6 pm.
In very short order, Mo'i was being examined by Dr. Keith Ray at the Animal ER. He recommended X-rays, and ten minutes later he was going over the electronic results with me. There was a very clear diagnosis, and it had nothing whatsoever to do with his blood pressure: Mo'i was suffering from gastric volvulus, causing his stomach to blow up like a balloon. The X-ray at right isn't of Mo'i, but it is very similar to his. There are lots more details at the link, but basically his stomach had spun on its lengthwise axis about 2/3 of a turn. This caused both ends of his stomach to be sealed shut, and it immediately started inflating from digestive gases. If untreated, it's fatal – and quickly. The mortality rate for diagnosed dogs is around 50%. The sufferer is in agony.
The treatment is surgical, and Dr. Ray is experienced in this particular surgery. He told me very frankly about the risks, which are significant. The two biggest risks: necrosis (dead tissue) of the stomach (caused by blood vessels being twisted shut) and loss of the spleen (again, from loss of blood supply). The first problem could cause anything from complications to death; the second could cause complications and increased risk of post-operative infections. He recommended immediate surgery (the only real alternative was to euthanise him), and by 7:30 pm Mo'i was being prepped for surgery. I had a chance to spend a bit of quality time with him as the tranquilizer was taking hold, but then it was off to the operating room for the Mo'i.
I drove back home to explain all this to Debbie, and to wait with her for the surgeon's call. There was nothing either of us could do at the Animal ER; we couldn't even be with Mo'i. So, feeling very helpless and very worried, we waited. Finally, a bit before midnight, we got the call from Dr. Ray: the surgery had gone very well. There was no stomach necrosis at all, and the spleen was fine. Dr. Ray suspects that Mo'i's hypertension actually helped in this situation, by forcing blood through the constrained blood vessels. Mo'i was fine, and his stomach was back in the right place, tacked down to a rib so it doesn't happen again, and the trapped gases were all released. We've heard this morning that Mo'i is recovering just fine; he's been up for a little walk and he's behaving like the dog he is. Hopefully we'll be able to bring him home tomorrow, where he'll be getting a bit of extra attention. And maybe a banana, if the vet permits...
Mo'i has had more than his share of health issues. A few years ago, he had a splinter of bone fragment pressing against his spinal cord; that required some fancy surgery to fix. Unusually for a dog, he has high blood pressure (hypertension). More recently he's been struggling with skin problems (bacterial and fungal infections) that make him itch all over and smell funky. The last few weeks he's had a couple of “hot spots” where he's licked and bitten the hair off a patch of skin, so we've had him wearing the “cone of shame” to keep him from further injuring himself.
But through all these travails, there's been one constant: put food down, and Mo'i is all over it. When he figures out that we're about to feed them, Mo'i starts whimpering and even trembling in anticipation. At moments like that, all thought of his pain or discomfort go flying out the window, and Mo'i is all about one thing: food, food, food, FOOD!
So yesterday afternoon (at 3 pm) when I fed the dogs and Mo'i was completely disinterested, I knew something was badly wrong. That had, quite literally, never happened before – not in his entire life. There were a couple of other less alarming symptoms as well: he was listless, held his back slightly arched, and had is little stub of a tail held level and trembling – all odd for him. Debbie called our local vet; she was not in the office but another vet was covering for her, so Mo'i and I jumped in my car and away we went.
Before 4 pm the vet was examining Mo'i. The only thing clearly wrong that he saw were his bright red gums – something possibly associated with Mo'i's hypertension. With nothing else to go on, the vet thought that Mo'i's symptoms were most likely caused by something related to his hypertension, and quite likely not something acute. Our local vet doesn't have the specialized sphygmomanometer needed for dogs, so he thought it might be a good idea to take Mo'i to the Animal ER in Kearny Mesa (40 miles or so away) where they did have a sphygmomanometer to get that blood pressure checked. He didn't think it was urgently necessary to take Mo'i up, and waiting until Monday would probably be ok as well.
Ordinarily this is the sort of thing that Debbie and I would decide together, as she'd be right there with me. But with Debbie laid up with her busted-up knee, I was down at the vet's on my own. It's the kind of tradeoff decision that pet owners agonize over – do we put our pet through the low-grade trauma of further tests and travel, spend the money and time? Is it actually necessary? Vets (like doctors) generally don't give clear-cut advice in such matters, but the vibes I was getting from this vet were “this isn't all that urgent”. On the other hand, the fact that Mo'i wouldn't eat was really sticking in my head – knowing Mo'i, that felt like a loud scream for help.
So I decided to take him to Animal ER. Mo'i and I loaded ourselves back into our ancient LandCruiser, I gassed up, and away we went. Animal ER didn't even open until 6 pm, so I thought I had plenty of time to get there – but it was raining, and the San Diego freeways were slick, and the traffic was horrible. I didn't make it up there until just before 6 pm.
The treatment is surgical, and Dr. Ray is experienced in this particular surgery. He told me very frankly about the risks, which are significant. The two biggest risks: necrosis (dead tissue) of the stomach (caused by blood vessels being twisted shut) and loss of the spleen (again, from loss of blood supply). The first problem could cause anything from complications to death; the second could cause complications and increased risk of post-operative infections. He recommended immediate surgery (the only real alternative was to euthanise him), and by 7:30 pm Mo'i was being prepped for surgery. I had a chance to spend a bit of quality time with him as the tranquilizer was taking hold, but then it was off to the operating room for the Mo'i.
I drove back home to explain all this to Debbie, and to wait with her for the surgeon's call. There was nothing either of us could do at the Animal ER; we couldn't even be with Mo'i. So, feeling very helpless and very worried, we waited. Finally, a bit before midnight, we got the call from Dr. Ray: the surgery had gone very well. There was no stomach necrosis at all, and the spleen was fine. Dr. Ray suspects that Mo'i's hypertension actually helped in this situation, by forcing blood through the constrained blood vessels. Mo'i was fine, and his stomach was back in the right place, tacked down to a rib so it doesn't happen again, and the trapped gases were all released. We've heard this morning that Mo'i is recovering just fine; he's been up for a little walk and he's behaving like the dog he is. Hopefully we'll be able to bring him home tomorrow, where he'll be getting a bit of extra attention. And maybe a banana, if the vet permits...
Friday, November 30, 2012
A Musical Experience...
I normally listen to music when I'm programming. The type of music varies with my mood and the difficulty of the work I'm doing; anything from piano jazz (e.g., George Winston) to some old-fashioned “heavy” rock (e.g., Black Sabbath). At home I usually play the music over a decent (but tiny) set of speakers with a separate sub-woofer. The sound quality is good, but certainly not noteworthy. Some time ago, I bought a pair of headphones so I could listen to music at work (which is an open environment where I really couldn't use speakers). I ended up rarely using them, as it was a hassle to take them on and off every few minutes when a colleague needed to talk with me.
I recently brought those headphones home, and today I'm using them – Debbie is enthroned near me, and she of course doesn't want my music playing while she's on the phone or watching a video. In some cases (like Melanie Safka), she detests my music and wouldn't want it playing under any circumstances where she could hear it :-)
So I'm using the headphones extensively, really for the first time – and I'm finding the experience to be extraordinary. I'm hearing things in music I'm very familiar with that I don't believe I've ever heard before. As I'm writing this, I'm listening to Peter, Paul, and Mary – and I can distinctly hear details like people walking on the set, and even the (very low level) hiss of the master tape. Even more striking is the sudden sense of location I have for the instruments and singers.
The headphones I have are made by Sennheiser, their model HD 555, which I bought on the recommendation of a reviewer when they went sale on Amazon. These are not the top-of-the-line model, but I'm very pleased with them...
I recently brought those headphones home, and today I'm using them – Debbie is enthroned near me, and she of course doesn't want my music playing while she's on the phone or watching a video. In some cases (like Melanie Safka), she detests my music and wouldn't want it playing under any circumstances where she could hear it :-)
So I'm using the headphones extensively, really for the first time – and I'm finding the experience to be extraordinary. I'm hearing things in music I'm very familiar with that I don't believe I've ever heard before. As I'm writing this, I'm listening to Peter, Paul, and Mary – and I can distinctly hear details like people walking on the set, and even the (very low level) hiss of the master tape. Even more striking is the sudden sense of location I have for the instruments and singers.
The headphones I have are made by Sennheiser, their model HD 555, which I bought on the recommendation of a reviewer when they went sale on Amazon. These are not the top-of-the-line model, but I'm very pleased with them...
Lupine...
Not my photo, and not a local species: this is from Columbia, Lupinus bogotensis, photo courtesy of Botany Photo of the Day...
When a Geek Tries to be Cute...
...this is what you get.
Hint: when the guy stops running, wave your cursor around over his head.
Via my mom...
Hint: when the guy stops running, wave your cursor around over his head.
Via my mom...
Here We Go...
I've no doubt that this is just an early salvo in the Obama administration's re-energized wealth redistribution campaign:
This is one example of precisely what Greece et al are fighting the consequences of right now. Not that we'd learn any lessons from that – it will be different for us, bleat the Progressive politicians.
I have no idea what the chances are for passage of this bill. It doesn't really matter, though. Things have progressed too far when a Congressman can even introduce such a bill without the rest of the House shouting him down. All I hear is...crickets...
H.R. 4170 would forgive student loan debt for those who have paid 10 percent of their discretionary income toward their loans for 10 years and would cap interest on federal student loans at the current rate of 3.4 percent. Individuals who go into teaching, public service or practice medicine in underserved areas would have their debt forgiven after only five years.Because over 90% of student loans are made directly by the Federal government, to “forgive” them simply means that future taxpayers will pay them – the debt doesn't simply disappear; instead it's due date is moved to the future and interest accumulates.
This is one example of precisely what Greece et al are fighting the consequences of right now. Not that we'd learn any lessons from that – it will be different for us, bleat the Progressive politicians.
I have no idea what the chances are for passage of this bill. It doesn't really matter, though. Things have progressed too far when a Congressman can even introduce such a bill without the rest of the House shouting him down. All I hear is...crickets...
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Awesome Anamorphic Illusions...
Anamorphic illusions are drawings or photographs that look very realistic when viewed from a particular vantage point. You may be familiar with them from some famous chalk sidewalk art. Here are a few of a completely different nature:
The author has made the source images available (here, here, and here) if you'd like to print them and try them yourself!
The author has made the source images available (here, here, and here) if you'd like to print them and try them yourself!
Free DNS Management...
Here's a startup offering a free DNS hosting and management service (made by Geeks!). Until they figure out how to make money at this, I'd be a little leery of having a dependency on them...
Birthday Distribution...
It's not a surprise that more babies are born on some particular dates (month and day) than on others. The distribution of those more “popular” dates was a big surprise to me. For instance, all ten of the ten most common dates for babies to be born are in September (where my birthday is). Here's a heat map showing those dates (and you can find an interactive version here).
English is a Scandinavian Language?
Jan Faarlund, a professor of linguistics at the University of Oslo, Norway, makes a very interesting claim: that Old English didn't evolve into Modern English (as is the general consensus of linguists today). Instead, he says, Old English simply died out after the Vikings invaded England, and Modern English evolved from the Vikings' language – much influenced by the Old English of the people they conquered.
The history of languages is an area that's long interested me, though I haven't had the opportunity to immerse myself in it very much. One reason why it fascinates me is that it's one of those areas of science that is extremely volatile: linguists' understanding and current models change very rapidly. Just within my adult lifetime there have been something like five or six “revolutions” in our understanding of the history of the world's languages. If Faarlund's claim ends up being verifiable, it's yet another example of this volatility...
The history of languages is an area that's long interested me, though I haven't had the opportunity to immerse myself in it very much. One reason why it fascinates me is that it's one of those areas of science that is extremely volatile: linguists' understanding and current models change very rapidly. Just within my adult lifetime there have been something like five or six “revolutions” in our understanding of the history of the world's languages. If Faarlund's claim ends up being verifiable, it's yet another example of this volatility...
Politicians and Cargo Cults...
CoyoteBlog has another interesting observation on the motivations of politicians (and, by inference, one of the fundamental reasons why democracy is broken).
Every time I get started down this particular line of thinking, I end up concluding that only a revolution (whether at the ballot box or otherwise) is going to get us off the path of doom. I was hoping for a ballot box revolution earlier this month, but obviously that didn't happen. Will there be one in 2016? Or is it too late already? I see three very broad possibilities:
1. Most likely: The Obama administration muddles through, kicks the fiscal can down the road yet again, and some sort of slow economic recovery occurs. The Republicans keep their House majority. The 2016 election will then be another close, toughly-fought battle between two parties with little daylight between their probable governing styles.
2. Possible: The Obama administration screws things up in ways that are impossible for even the most blinkered partisans to see. The Republicans lose their House majority. There are many opportunities for this: fiscal management, Afghanistan, regulatory weight, etc. The 2016 election will then be a referendum on how to recover from whatever the Obama-provoked disaster was. The Republicans will have the natural advantage of not being in Obama's party, and there's always the interesting possibility that the Tea Party will emerge as the champions of the most popular fix. If the disaster was particularly profound (less likely), then there's even the possibility for that ballot box revolution I hoped for this time. Not a particularly savory option, but one of the few that looks like it has the chance of a good outcome that doesn't involve violence.
3. Least likely: The Obama administration presides over a spectacular economic recovery. Democrats take the House majority. Businesses grow strongly, the stock market soars, the war in Afghanistan ends in some satisfying way, no new wars start, and even hyper-partisan commentators start saying positive things about Obama. The 2016 election will then be the Democrats to lose; all they have to do is field a plausibly “Obama II” candidate.
I don't much like those options...
Every time I get started down this particular line of thinking, I end up concluding that only a revolution (whether at the ballot box or otherwise) is going to get us off the path of doom. I was hoping for a ballot box revolution earlier this month, but obviously that didn't happen. Will there be one in 2016? Or is it too late already? I see three very broad possibilities:
1. Most likely: The Obama administration muddles through, kicks the fiscal can down the road yet again, and some sort of slow economic recovery occurs. The Republicans keep their House majority. The 2016 election will then be another close, toughly-fought battle between two parties with little daylight between their probable governing styles.
2. Possible: The Obama administration screws things up in ways that are impossible for even the most blinkered partisans to see. The Republicans lose their House majority. There are many opportunities for this: fiscal management, Afghanistan, regulatory weight, etc. The 2016 election will then be a referendum on how to recover from whatever the Obama-provoked disaster was. The Republicans will have the natural advantage of not being in Obama's party, and there's always the interesting possibility that the Tea Party will emerge as the champions of the most popular fix. If the disaster was particularly profound (less likely), then there's even the possibility for that ballot box revolution I hoped for this time. Not a particularly savory option, but one of the few that looks like it has the chance of a good outcome that doesn't involve violence.
3. Least likely: The Obama administration presides over a spectacular economic recovery. Democrats take the House majority. Businesses grow strongly, the stock market soars, the war in Afghanistan ends in some satisfying way, no new wars start, and even hyper-partisan commentators start saying positive things about Obama. The 2016 election will then be the Democrats to lose; all they have to do is field a plausibly “Obama II” candidate.
I don't much like those options...
Best and Worst Run States...
An interesting analysis for anyone considering leaving the worst-run state: California. The results are available in tabular form and in text form.
Debbie and I are experiencing a cyclical emotional reaction to the thought of leaving California. The cycle starts with a gradually increasing sense of regret and unease at the thought of leaving our friends, places we've come to love, and so much that's familiar and comfortable. Then we'll hear a piece of news (most recently, that the takers in Sacremento are seriously considering a radical rise in the commercial property tax rates)...and we'll snap back to “Oh, crap, we've got to get out of here!”
This analysis is clarifying for the simple reason that it sets down in tangible form the real (and quite striking) differences in the way various states are run...
Debbie and I are experiencing a cyclical emotional reaction to the thought of leaving California. The cycle starts with a gradually increasing sense of regret and unease at the thought of leaving our friends, places we've come to love, and so much that's familiar and comfortable. Then we'll hear a piece of news (most recently, that the takers in Sacremento are seriously considering a radical rise in the commercial property tax rates)...and we'll snap back to “Oh, crap, we've got to get out of here!”
This analysis is clarifying for the simple reason that it sets down in tangible form the real (and quite striking) differences in the way various states are run...
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Organic Molecules Found on Mars?
An Italian newspaper is reporting this. I don't know the paper and so I have no idea whether it's more like the National Enquirer or the Wall Street Journal...
A Moment of Truth...
This video captures quite nicely the feelings that I and many other and many other Vietnam-era veterans have upon witnessing the respect so often commanded by our soldiers today. On the one hand, as veterans ourselves, we know how much those big “thank yous” mean. On the other hand, we got no such wonderful treatment ourselves – in fact, often quite the opposite. Most service men and women in the time that I served would avoid going off military facilities in uniform – as being in uniform (most especially before about 1974) was an invitation for abuse by our fellow citizens. We certainly didn't feel cherished – or even tolerated. Watch:
Last year I posted about a colleague of mine who gave me a big hug, a big “thank you!” and a Starbucks card on Veteran's Day. That was the very first time any of my fellow citizens have ever thanked me for my service (at that point over 30 years in the past!), and I was quite moved by the gesture. She did it again this year, and again I'm smiling every time I use that card.
I take every opportunity I can to say thanks in a meaningful way to a service man or woman I meet. I'm going to try to find ways to do the same for those veterans who, like me, were not thanked while they served...
Last year I posted about a colleague of mine who gave me a big hug, a big “thank you!” and a Starbucks card on Veteran's Day. That was the very first time any of my fellow citizens have ever thanked me for my service (at that point over 30 years in the past!), and I was quite moved by the gesture. She did it again this year, and again I'm smiling every time I use that card.
I take every opportunity I can to say thanks in a meaningful way to a service man or woman I meet. I'm going to try to find ways to do the same for those veterans who, like me, were not thanked while they served...
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Rocknest: Awesome Martian Panorama...
This panorama was made from dozens of individual photos taken while Curiosity was parked at Rocknest. It's been white-balanced so that colors appear as they would if viewed under the light we see on the Earth's surface (it's much redder light on Mars). Click here to get the gigantic full-resolution JPG image, and here to see the NASA information about it.
Feds Shut Down Intrade...
Intrade is one of the two main online prediction markets in the U.S., used for many purposes but probably best-known for their election prediction market. The other online prediction market is the Iowa Electronic Market, which I cited extensively in the recent election season. Both of these markets have been operating for years without problems. Now some soul-sucking Obama administration bureaucrat has decided they're so evil they must be shut down.
It's very weird to be sitting here watching my country death spiral...
It's very weird to be sitting here watching my country death spiral...
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Insanity in My Family...
Via my lovely niece Amber G., who attended our recent family reunion – and then saw this graphic, which resonated with her for some reason:
Fiona Apple's Dog...
Fiona Apple is a singer, one I'd never heard of before. She recently canceled a tour, explaining herself to her fans with this letter:
Via Rachel Lucas...
It’s 6pm on Friday, and I’m writing to a few thousand friends I have not met yet. I’m writing to ask them to change our plans and meet a little while later.That's a dog person. My kind of dog person. I don't really like her music (I listened to a couple of music videos), but who cares?
Here’s the thing.
I have a dog, Janet, and she’s been ill for about 2 years now, as a tumor has been idling in her chest, growing ever so slowly. She’s almost 14 years old now. I got her when she was 4 months old. I was 21 then — an adult, officially — and she was my kid.
She is a pitbull, and was found in Echo Park, with a rope around her neck, and bites all over her ears and face.
She was the one the dogfighters use to puff up the confidence of the contenders.
She’s almost 14 and I’ve never seen her start a fight, or bite, or even growl, so I can understand why they chose her for that awful role. She’s a pacifist.
Janet has been the most consistent relationship of my adult life, and that is just a fact. We’ve lived in numerous houses, and joined a few makeshift families, but it’s always really been just the two of us.
She slept in bed with me, her head on the pillow, and she accepted my hysterical, tearful face into her chest, with her paws around me, every time I was heartbroken, or spirit-broken, or just lost, and as years went by, she let me take the role of her child, as I fell asleep, with her chin resting above my head.
She was under the piano when I wrote songs, barked any time I tried to record anything, and she was in the studio with me, all the time we recorded the last album.
The last time I came back from tour, she was spry as ever, and she’s used to me being gone for a few weeks, every 6 or 7 years.
She has Addison’s Disease, which makes it more dangerous for her to travel, since she needs regular injections of Cortisol, because she reacts to stress and excitement without the physiological tools which keep most of us from literally panicking to death.
Despite all this, she’s effortlessly joyful & playful, and only stopped acting like a puppy about 3 years ago. She is my best friend, and my mother, and my daughter, my benefactor, and she’s the one who taught me what love is.
I can’t come to South America. Not now. When I got back from the last leg of the US tour, there was a big, big difference.
She doesn’t even want to go for walks anymore.
I know that she’s not sad about aging or dying. Animals have a survival instinct, but a sense of mortality and vanity, they do not. That’s why they are so much more present than people.
But I know she is coming close to the time where she will stop being a dog, and start instead to be part of everything. She’ll be in the wind, and in the soil, and the snow, and in me, wherever I go.
I just can’t leave her now, please understand. If I go away again, I’m afraid she’ll die and I won’t have the honor of singing her to sleep, of escorting her out.
Sometimes it takes me 20 minutes just to decide what socks to wear to bed.
But this decision is instant.
These are the choices we make, which define us. I will not be the woman who puts her career ahead of love & friendship.
I am the woman who stays home, baking Tilapia for my dearest, oldest friend. And helps her be comfortable & comforted & safe & important.
Many of us these days, we dread the death of a loved one. It is the ugly truth of Life that keeps us feeling terrified & alone. I wish we could also appreciate the time that lies right beside the end of time. I know that I will feel the most overwhelming knowledge of her, and of her life and of my love for her, in the last moments.
I need to do my damnedest, to be there for that.
Because it will be the most beautiful, the most intense, the most enriching experience of life I’ve ever known.
When she dies.
So I am staying home, and I am listening to her snore and wheeze, and I am revelling in the swampiest, most awful breath that ever emanated from an angel. And I’m asking for your blessing.
I’ll be seeing you.
Love,
Fiona
Via Rachel Lucas...
Curiosity: Scene from Gale Crater...
Curiosity is busy driving to its next research site. The raw image feed seems to show mainly photos designed to help the navigation team find its way amongst the many hazards on the floor of Gale Crater. Today's photo is just one of many downloaded from the Mast camera on Sol 107. I liked the scene of hills through the dusty atmosphere...
Trees on Mars?
This photo was taken in April 2008 by the Mars Reconnaisance Observer (MRO) satellite. It appears to show dark trees against the pink sand, but that's not at all what's happening here. Check out this APOD post for details – and be sure to check out the links!
What a Female Engineer Does for Fun...
Take one female engineer, one who happens to be dissatisfied with her latest vibrator (of the “sex toy” variety). Add a bent for hacking, ownership of a 3D printer, and the know-how to do all this. What do you suppose you get? She calls it “hacking her vagina”. Some might call it the ultimate vibrator. To any geek, male or female, it's a fascinating read – mostly written in the same dry, detailed style another geek might have written up something like a voice-controlled lamp dimmer.
One thing that occurred to me as I was reading her post: unless she is incredibly naive (and her style makes me doubt that), posting this article took quite a bit of courage. Presumably Beth has a job, and colleagues...and most likely some of them read her blog. That ought to make for some coffee room conversations that are a bit, er, racier than the usual variety!
One thing that occurred to me as I was reading her post: unless she is incredibly naive (and her style makes me doubt that), posting this article took quite a bit of courage. Presumably Beth has a job, and colleagues...and most likely some of them read her blog. That ought to make for some coffee room conversations that are a bit, er, racier than the usual variety!
Analytical Programming: Babbage...
Christian Hansen has posted the next installment of his excellent series on Babbage's calculating machines. If you're a geek, it's a must-read...
Saturday, November 24, 2012
Dr. Sowell: “We're Lost”...
Hearing someone of the wisdom and intellectual clarity of Dr. Sowell declaring that all is lost is most definitely...not comforting...
This Is Getting Serious!
Via friend and neighbor Dick F.:
Look what happens when we cut down too many trees.
Global warming is one thing, but see below and look at what might happen if we continue to clear our forests!
We have to stop cutting down trees! This is getting serious!
The Typewriter...
Via my mom...
Some of my colleagues are young enough that they wouldn't recognize the manual typewriter being used. There's a possibility they'd believe it was actually a musical instrument!
Some of my colleagues are young enough that they wouldn't recognize the manual typewriter being used. There's a possibility they'd believe it was actually a musical instrument!
Friday, November 23, 2012
U.S. Post Office Tries to Get With It...
The U.S. Post Office (USPS) loses billions of dollars each year, and each year Congress agrees to allow taxpayers to cover that shortfall. The tale behind how the USPS manages to “stay in business” is one of the great stories of dysfunctional government. And now that paragon of inefficiency has decided to take advantage of an opportunity to leverage its vast, union-crippled, calamitously-managed assets: they're going to work with national retailers to let them provide same-day package delivery.
If the USPS were an ordinary business, unencumbered by union work rule problems and with competent management struggling to make a profit...then I might have some faith in a positive outcome. Given the pathetic reality of the USPS, the only faith that I have is that they will bungle this opportunity in a spectacular fashion. They will find a way to lose even more money, and we the taxpayers will bail them out once again. Meanwhile, they will succeed in making it more difficult for some competent private sector organization to enter the business.
Unions: 1
Taxpayers: 0
Again.
If the USPS were an ordinary business, unencumbered by union work rule problems and with competent management struggling to make a profit...then I might have some faith in a positive outcome. Given the pathetic reality of the USPS, the only faith that I have is that they will bungle this opportunity in a spectacular fashion. They will find a way to lose even more money, and we the taxpayers will bail them out once again. Meanwhile, they will succeed in making it more difficult for some competent private sector organization to enter the business.
Unions: 1
Taxpayers: 0
Again.
Beautiful Free Icons...
Adam Whitcroft has open-sourced a collection of beautiful minimalist icons, scalable and suitable for web design. There's an interesting backstory about why he made it free. Basically, it boils down to this: he built the collection to see it used, not to make money.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)