Where and When Did “+” and “-” Originate?

Much more recently than I would have guessed!

Cheap, Simple, Small, Safe Nuclear Power...

Molten-salt fission reactor technology sounds compelling to me, the more so every new time I read about it.  In a rational world (that would be some other planet, most likely in some other space-time continuum), environmentalists would be demanding the use of technology like this in place of coal- or gas-fired electrical generation.  I've only seen them railing in mostly mindless opposition, though...

Lakes Entertainment, Cleaning Up the Mess Edition...

Lakes Entertainment has posted its 2012 Q4 and Y results, which prominently features the wind-up of it's agreement with the Jamul Indian Tribe.  There no real news here, just an opportunity for some schadenfreude and satisfaction...

How I Wish Congress (or Obama) Behaved...

This brilliant clip lampoons Congress and Obama for ratcheting up the national debt – and it does so in a way that absolutely anyone can comprehend.  The facial expressions of the banker eloquently convey the reactions that any fiscal conservative would wish that Congress and the executive branch would have when asked to raise the debt limit.  I know, I know, it isn't going to happen.  But I can still hope, can't I?

Swiss Drums...

Drums like you've never seen them before, trust me:

Quote of the Day...

From Mark Steyn, during his substitute stint on the Rush Limbaugh show yesterday.  I didn't hear this, but I wish I had:

You’re doomed, America.  You’re done for. No society can survive this level of stupidity. The school counselor is available to meet with any students who are traumatized by hearing reports of some guy four grades below them who nibbles a Pop Tart into a gun-like shape. I’ve never subscribed to this whole greatest generation thing, you know. But you look at those guys, they weren’t much older than the kids from the school. A lot of them were like 17, 18 years old. And they’re storming out of these transport ships in the churning waters of the English Channel and the North Sea, and they’re landing on the beaches of Normandy. And they're getting out of these, and they are storming up the beaches and they’re taking German gunfire and all the rest.

Do you think if you raised people so that you make a school counselor to available to them in cased they’ve been traumatized by someone who was nibbled a Pop Tart into the shape of a gun — do you think if they’re ever called upon to get out those ships and the storm the beaches of Normandy, do you think they’re going to be up to that? ‘Oh no look, the Germans, they’re all holding Pop Tarts! AAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!’ No society can survive this level of stupidity. These small things are not small. They tell you a lot about the institutionalized stupidity of our institutions.

I share Mr. Steyn's sense of foreboding, though I am somewhat consoled by the fact that our most excellent warriors in service today somehow managed to emerge from a situation not much better than the Pop Tart affair.  The majority of our warriors come from the southern half of our country, where the culture hasn't deteriorated quite so much.  At least in places...

Earthquake!

Yesterday at 9:56:06 Pacific time there was a magnitude 4.7 earthquake near Anza, California.  There were also a number of smaller quakes both before and after the big one.  I was outside walking our dogs when the shaking hit our house about 15 seconds later, and I never felt a thing (see seismograph below, from the seismometer in our house).  I did hear a neighbor's dog start howling mournfully at exactly the time the quake hit us, no doubt reacting to it.  The epicenter is about 77 km (44 miles) from our house, implying a seismic wave propagation speed of around 5 km/second, as expected.

Debbie was inside our house at the time, and she reports audible rumbling just before the main shock hit.  That is exactly what the seismograph shows, with smaller accelerations for about 10 seconds before the “big” secondary wave hit us at 9:56:31 (note that the seismograph is in UTC time, 7 hours later than Pacific time).

Unhappy Collisions with Scientific Realities...

Sam Harris has an excellent piece about how it feels when a cherished belief collides with reality as understood by science.  In particular he offers this up as a way for non-believers to understand how it feels to a religious person when science contradicts their faith.  Even without that context, I think it's a great example for anyone who doesn't like (or doesn't believe) what science has discovered.  Here's a snippet from his piece:

On a cold night, most people consider a well-tended fire to be one of the more wholesome pleasures that humanity has produced. A fire, burning safely within the confines of a fireplace or a woodstove, is a visible and tangible source of comfort to us. We love everything about it: the warmth, the beauty of its flames, and—unless one is allergic to smoke—the smell that it imparts to the surrounding air.

I am sorry to say that if you feel this way about a wood fire, you are not only wrong but dangerously misguided. I mean to seriously convince you of this—so you can consider it in part a public service announcement—but please keep in mind that I am drawing an analogy. I want you to be sensitive to how you feel, and to notice the resistance you begin to muster as you consider what I have to say.

Because wood is among the most natural substances on earth, and its use as a fuel is universal, most people imagine that burning wood must be a perfectly benign thing to do. Breathing winter air scented by wood smoke seems utterly unlike puffing on a cigarette or inhaling the exhaust from a passing truck. But this is an illusion.

Here is what we know from a scientific point of view: There is no amount of wood smoke that is good to breathe. It is at least as bad for you as cigarette smoke, and probably much worse. (One study found it to be 30 times more potent a carcinogen.) The smoke from an ordinary wood fire contains hundreds of compounds known to be carcinogenic, mutagenic, teratogenic, and irritating to the respiratory system. Most of the particles generated by burning wood are smaller than one micron—a size believed to be most damaging to our lungs. In fact, these particles are so fine that they can evade our mucociliary defenses and travel directly into the bloodstream, posing a risk to the heart. Particles this size also resist gravitational settling, remaining airborne for weeks at a time. 

Mr. Harris leaves unanswered a related question: how does one decide which science is valid, and should guide one's beliefs?  It would be unscientific to accept all published science results on faith :)   The best approach I know is to read and educate oneself about an area of science that is of interest, then make up your own mind based on the evidence you can see and judge.  What most definitely doesn't work is to read the opinions of others and go with the majority...

Green Cars...

Many people are attracted to either all-electric or hybrid cars because they believe they are helping the environment by doing so – they are “green” cars.  There are other reasons as well, but for many buyers of “green” cars, their green-ness is the major factor.

However, when you take into account the additional carbon footprint and other pollutants produced in the manufacture of both hybrid and all-electric cars, and the indirect carbon footprint and pollution increase from all-electric cars (because they're recharged with electricity produced most often in a non-nuclear power plant), then they don't look quite so green.  Over the average lifetime of a green car, both the carbon footprint and the pollution are worse than the average gasoline-powered car – and there's nothing on the horizon that would change that.  Massive conversion of power plants to nuclear or fusion power would help a lot, but that's not very likely.  Massive conversion to wind or solar doesn't work because there is no known way to store power produced during the daytime for use at night.  Lithium mining is notoriously polluting and energy intensive, but no replacement technology for lithium-ion batteries is even in the laboratory, much less in production.

None of this information is a secret, nor is it hidden or hard to access.  Do a little googling and you can find all you want.  Green cars are a myth (albeit a popular myth!).  They really should be called brown cars.

Bjorn Lomberg (of The Skeptical Environmentalist fame) has a nice summary of this in today's Wall Street Journal)...

A Triumph of Form Over Function...

The side-mounted rear-view mirrors on our new FJ Cruiser are roughly rectangular in shape, mounted with the long side vertical (usually the long side of these mirrors is horizontal).  Debbie and I both immediately noticed the poor vision to the rear, especially when compared with our Tundra trucks. 

With a little analysis, it's easy to see why.  I won't bore you with the trigonometry, but...with the driver sitting 30" from the 5.5" wide left mirror, the field of vision is only about 10° wide.  On our Tundras, with their 8.75" wide mirrors, it's about 17° wide – definitely a noticeable difference!

So today I installed some wide-angle “blind spot” mirrors on both sides of our FJ.  These are from ICU, and they use mirrors made of glass (most of these sorts of mirrors are made either of plastic or polished metal, both of which get roughened surfaces quite quickly).  

A driver's-perspective view of the left mirror shows how much this improves the field of vision.  My rough estimate is that I now have a 40° field of view, a vast improvement over 10°

If we drive with these for a while and still don't like them, I may commit FJ sacrilege: install big-rig style tripod mirrors on both sides.  Those mirrors are hell on the drag coefficient, and would probably drop our highway mileage significantly, so I'm hoping I don't have to resort to that.  One other possibility occurred to me: cameras installed on the mirror mount (perhaps on the bottom of them), displaying on screens over my head.  That might work as well.

Why did the FJ designers make such a wacky choice for the mirrors?  The only reason I can think of is that some designer thought the vertical mounting looked better, and didn't care what that choice did to the driver's visibility.  We curse this designer daily...

Does Repitition on the Internet Make It True?

Via friend and reader Doug W., who points out, tongue-in-cheek, that “Of course, this kind of issue has no relation whatsoever to the climate change debate”...

What Old People Do for Fun...

Grasshopper Makes a Record High Hop...

It jumped 263 feet!

But this isn't your momma's grasshopper:

Benjamin Franklin on Daylight Saving...

Nearly every time I read some of Benjamin Franklin's writings I am surprised by his wit and humor.  I need to read more :)

Here's a snippet from a long letter he wrote advocating the adoption of Daylight Saving time:

An accidental sudden noise waked me about six in the morning, when I was surprised to find my room filled with light; and I imagined at first, that a number of those lamps had been brought into it; but, rubbing my eyes, I perceived the light came in at the windows. I got up and looked out to see what might be the occasion of it, when I saw the sun just rising above the horizon, from whence he poured his rays plentifully into my chamber, my domestic having negligently omitted, the preceding evening, to close the shutters.

I looked at my watch, which goes very well, and found that it was but six o'clock; and still thinking it something extraordinary that the sun should rise so early, I looked into the almanac, where I found it to be the hour given for his rising on that day. I looked forward, too, and found he was to rise still earlier every day till towards the end of June; and that at no time in the year he retarded his rising so long as till eight o'clock. Your readers, who with me have never seen any signs of sunshine before noon, and seldom regard the astronomical part of the almanac, will be as much astonished as I was, when they hear of his rising so early; and especially when I assure them, that he gives light as soon as he rises. I am convinced of this. I am certain of my fact. One cannot be more certain of any fact. I saw it with my own eyes. And, having repeated this observation the three following mornings, I found always precisely the same result.

Yet it so happens, that when I speak of this discovery to others, I can easily perceive by their countenances, though they forbear expressing it in words, that they do not quite believe me. One, indeed, who is a learned natural philosopher, has assured me that I must certainly be mistaken as to the circumstance of the light coming into my room; for it being well known, as he says, that there could be no light abroad at that hour, it follows that none could enter from without; and that of consequence, my windows being accidentally left open, instead of letting in the light, had only served to let out the darkness; and he used many ingenious arguments to show me how I might, by that means, have been deceived. I owned that he puzzled me a little, but he did not satisfy me; and the subsequent observations I made, as above mentioned, confirmed me in my first opinion.

Do read the whole thing...

To Space and Back...

Read all about this here...

Karzai Accuses U.S. of Colluding with the Taliban...

This morning I read that Afghan President Karzai just accused the U.S. of colluding with Taliban ($WSJ) to persuade the Afghan public that they really needed foreign forces (which are, of course, primarily American) to stay past the announced withdrawal date in 2014.  The specific accusation is that the U.S. “coordinated” the Taliban suicide bombings in Kabul yesterday.

I caught myself in a very uncomfortable moment as I read, when I realized that I was actually considering that Karzai was telling the truth.  Ordinarily I'd have dismissed such as statement as the delusional ravings of a hard-pressed foreign politician frantically searching for a scapegoat.  Not this time.  I'm not saying that I believe Karzai is correct; in fact, I still think that's very unlikely.  But...I'm keeping an open mind about it.  Should some actual evidence surface, I'll be paying close attention. 

Why this change in attitude?  It's really very simple: I have absolutely zero faith that the Obama administration's actions are guided by America's interests.  I am persuaded that only their own interests guide their actions.  If they thought colluding with the Taliban would help them, I have no doubt they'd find a way to justify it to themselves.

I am saddened to find myself thinking this way...

The Greek Letter π and Gravity...

Consider the following formulae:

π² ≈ 9.87
g ≈ 9.81 N/k

The constant g is the gravitational constant, for the force of gravity at the Earth's surface. 

The two numbers are very close.  I'd have dismissed this as pure coincidence, but in fact it is not.  Fascinating!

Two Government-Dependent Progressives on an Escalator...

The Phony Recovery...

Whenever a politician tells you that our economy is recovering, remember this graph.  We won't have a real recovery until the employment-population ratio gets back up above 61% or so.  Any politician who tells you otherwise is lying.  Or as Mark Twain would say, they're opening their mouth (as the only thing likely to emerge is a lie)...

Chinese Junk Takes Out Russian Satellite...

Space junk, that is – not a ship.  This prognosis pretty much sums it up:

It is not immediately clear whether the satellite is merely wounded or completely incapacitated.

Oops...

“Magic” Sand...

An entertaining demonstration of hydrophobic materials:

Cows Are the Answer!?!

Via Watts Up With That, this awesome TED talk by Dr. Allan Savory.  He shows how people on five continents have reversed desertification by increasing grazing – contra decades of “scientific” grasslands management...


His big insight was realizing the role that wild herds of grazing animals played in the ecology of natural grasslands.  Their mechanical reduction (trampling) of grass provides mulch, fertilizer, and water – perfect conditions for the next generation of grass even during a dry season.

Awesome!

Nobody Texts Dog...

Quote of the Day...

From Mark Steyn's current piece on the drone debate:

The guys with drones are losing to the guys with fertilizer — because they mean it, and we don’t.

If the fertilizer reference escapes you, Mr. Steyn is referring to the Taliban's homemade bombs, which use ammonia-based fertilizers mixed with oil as their explosive...

This Probably Means I'm a Bad Person...

...but I thought this was very funny :)

Flying Pig Moment, Legal Department...

The Ninth Circuit Appeals Court, justifiably notorious for its progressive-leaning rulings, must have missed its meds: they've just ruled that agents at border crossings cannot search digital devices (such as phones, laptops, etc.) for no reason at all.  The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been asserting its right to do just that, leading many organizations to counsel that travelers not carry these devices with them.  DHS has also cited, numerous times, that the mere existence of an encrypted file is suspicious – a plainly absurd assertion in this day and age.

Someone please hide those meds!  This kind of Ninth Circuit I could learn to admire!

Best Debugging Story Evah?

Well, a candidate, maybe.  Awesome?  You betcha.  It involves Forth, TTL, microcode, and an oven.  What could possibly go wrong?  :)

(Many) More Solutions to the Three-Body Problem...

When I first read the title of this article, I thought it was referring to a different (though related) problem: computing the course of a satellite (one body) through a two-body system (such as the Earth and the Moon).  When I was a kid first learning about space travel, this was a notoriously unsolved problem.  Instead of the usual sort of mathematical solution to this problem, navigators at NASA resorted to finite state models to solve the problem.  Later on (in the '70s, if memory serves me right), mathematicians did develop equations that solved that particular three-body problem, but systems with more bodies (like Jupiter and Saturn) remained challenging, and were still normally solved with finite state modeling.

But this article is about a different sort of three-body problem – stable orbits of three-body systems.  Similar, and still interesting, though...

Dark Corners of “C”

A presentation on some quirks of the C programming language.  Very nicely done...

3D Printing in the Body...

Doctors have replaced 75% of a patient's skull with an artificial skull made on a 3D printer.  Awesome!

Of Course He Did!

What else would you expect him to do?  Plead guilty?  Really?

Of Course They Did...

As we explained a few days ago, of course the bureaucrats are going to first cut the services the public wants...

The Standing Joke...

For anyone who even halfway follows politics in America, the bureaucracy's response to a threatened budget cut is entirely predictable: they will say that the public's most cherished service provided by that bureaucracy will be cut.  Hence when a politician dares to suggest that the San Diego City budget be cut, the first thing we hear from the bureaucracy is: fired cops, fired firemen, closed parks and libraries, etc.  You absolutely never hear that the public art budget will be slashed, bureaucratic staff will be reduced, or pensions will be cut.  Never.  It's achieved the status of a standing joke amongst political insiders.

The really sad part is that it works, at least most of the time.  It scares the politically unaware, or the parents with kids in school (when they threaten to fire teachers), or other similarly affected.  Most of the time, the bureaucracy's budget is restored (or even increased!).

I think of this as a slightly subtle form of corruption, with the bureaucrats playing the voting public for the fools they unfortunately are...

Friend and reader Doug W. points out this editorial by one of my favorite writers, Thomas Sowell.  It makes the same point more effectively.  Here's the lead (with Doug's emphasis):

Back in my teaching days, many years ago, one of the things I liked to ask the class to consider was this: Imagine a government agency with only two tasks: (1) building statues of Benedict Arnold and (2) providing life-saving medications to children. If this agency's budget were cut, what would it do?

The answer, of course, is that it would cut back on the medications for children. Why? Because that would be what was most likely to get the budget cuts restored. If they cut back on building statues of Benedict Arnold, people might ask why they were building statues of Benedict Arnold in the first place.

Do read the whole thing...

More UNIX Tricks...

A nice little collection...

Surprised Me!

First, take a look at this short UFO clip, acknowledged to be a hoax:


Here's the surprise. I think most people, upon viewing this film and either assuming or being informed that it's a hoax, would believe that the perpetrators took a background video and superimposed the UFO on it through some clever “photoshopping”. But that's not how it was done!


Everything in the clip was created with photo-realistic computer generated graphics (CG). Awesome!

It also means that you really cannot trust video as a source of evidence – this is an instance proof that people-fooling video can be created to show anything at all...

Curiosity Powers Down...

It's a precautionary measure, now that Curiosity is running on the alternate computer.  They're taking the precaution because of a giant solar flare headed toward Mars...

So God Made a Dog...

This is a takeoff on Paul Harvey's famous piece “So God made a farmer”.  Guaranteed to warm the heart of any dog lover, including the non-believers...

Crocus...

An outrageously gorgeous snow crocus, or Crocus tommasinianus.  From BPOD, of course:

Mercury Map...

NASA has published a new false-color map of the entire planet of Mercury. 

I remember Mariner 10, when it returned the first photos from Mercury – grainy, black-and-white, and seemingly miraculous.  At right is an example of those first photos.  Now we have this incredibly detailed image that's chock full of information encoded in those false colors, revealing the kinds of geology over the entire planet's surface.

What a Bug!

The programmer made a common error: converting a floating point “double” to a 16 bit signed integer (a “short”). 

For my non-programmer readers, this is a little like trying to use a quart jar to store water, then transferring it to a drinking glass.  It works fine if your quart jar only has a little water in it, but if the quart jar has more water in it, that water won't all fit in the drinking glass.  In this case, it's the numeric value that won't fit.  For example, if that double had the value 200,000 in it, the short would end up with something very different – the biggest number it can hold is 32,767 (don't ask why unless you really want to get into the weeds!).

So the programmer made this noobie error.  Most of the time, the consequence of this sort of error is just a “Aw, crap!”, and the programmer fixes it.  This time the consequence was the loss of $500 million dollars – because it blew up an Ariane 5 and its cargo.

Major bummer...

Whittle on Voter Fraud...

Bill Whittle has a knack for clearly articulating common sense political observations.  I listen to him every time I see one of his videos published.  This one is particularly biting, while nevertheless managing to sneak in some of his trademark humor along the way...

Giant Arapaima...

British fisherman Steve Townson caught a 250 pound freshwater fish, an arapaima.  He released it after weighing and taking photos.

Awesome...

Layers of Fact-Checkers...

ABC News mis-labels Iraq on the map in this broadcast – as Iran.  What exactly was your complaint with bloggers, again?

The Dog Poem...

Via my lovely bride:

Why own a dog? There's a danger you know
You can't own just one, for the craving will grow.
There's no doubt they're addictive, wherein lies the danger.
While living with lots, you'll grow poorer and stranger.

One dog is no trouble, and two are so funny.
The third one is easy, the fourth one's a honey.
The fifth one's delightful, the sixth one's a breeze,
You find you can live with a houseful of ease.

So how 'bout another? Would you really dare?
They're really quite easy but, oh, Lord the hair!
With dogs on the sofa and dogs on the bed,
And crates in the kitchen, it's no bother, you've said.

They're really no trouble, their manners are great.
What's one more dog and just one more crate?
The sofa is hairy, the windows are crusty,
The floor is all footprints, the furniture dusty.

The housekeeping suffers, but what do you care?
Who minds a few noseprints and a little more hair?
So let's keep a puppy, you can always find room,
And a little more time for the dust cloth and broom.

There's hardly a limit to the dogs you can add,
The thought of a cutback sure makes you sad.
Each one is so special, so useful, so funny.
The vet and food bills grows larger, you owe BIG money.

Your folks never visit, few friends come to stay,
Except other "dog folks" who live the same way.
Your lawn has now died, and your shrubs are dead too,
But your weekends are busy, you're off with your crew.

There's dog food and vitamins, training and shots.
And entries and travel and motels which cost lots.
Is it worth it you wonder? Are you caught in a trap?
Then that favorite one comes and climbs in your lap.

His look says you're special and you know that you will
Keep all of the critters in spite of the bill.
Some just for showing and some just to breed.
And some just for loving, they all fill a need.

God, winter's a hassle, the dogs hate it too.
But they must have their walks though they're numb and your blue.
Late evening is awful, you scream and you shout
At the dogs on the sofa who refuse to go out.

The dogs and the dog shows, the travel, the thrills,
The work and the worry, the pressure, the bills.
The whole thing seems worth it, the dogs are your life.
They're charming and funny and offset the strife.

Your life-style has changed. Things won't be the same.
Yes, those dogs are addictive and so is the dog game.

For the record, we've curbed our addiction at four.  We think...

American Eggs are Not the Same as British Eggs...

It would be illegal to sell American eggs in a British supermarket.  It would also be illegal to sell British eggs in an American supermarket.  How can this be?

Viking Navigation...

I've read several times speculation that the Vikings used polarized light to help navigate.  They didn't know that's what they were doing, they just discovered “sunstones” – calcite crystals – that naturally polarized light and could be used to tell where the sun was even on a cloudy day, and before sunrise or after sunset.

Now it appears that scientists have actually found a sunstone in the wreck of a Viking ship.

Awesome dudes, those Vikings...

We Had One of These...

Back in the '60s my family somehow acquired a gigantic boat of a car: a Chrysler station wagon.  It was equipped with a couple of gadgets that even then struck me as quite odd.  One was a push-button automatic transmission (no lever, just dashboard mounted push-buttons).  The other was a record player, exactly like the one at right.  I ran across this on Retronaut.

We could never play the darned thing, because we didn't have any of the 16.66 RPM records for it.  I don't even know if ours worked...

Criminal!

If this isn't a crime, it should be:

In the email sent Monday by Charles Brown, an official with the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service office in Raleigh, N.C., Mr. Brown asked “if there was any latitude” in how to spread the sequester cuts across the region to lessen the impacts on fish inspections.

He said he was discouraged by officials in Washington, who gave him this reply: “We have gone on record with a notification to Congress and whoever else that ‘APHIS would eliminate assistance to producers in 24 states in managing wildlife damage to the aquaculture industry, unless they provide funding to cover the costs.’ So it is our opinion that however you manage that reduction, you need to make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be.”

Translation: A government official asks if he can spread the sequestration effects around so as to minimize the impact.  Answer: not if doing so prevents the sequestration impacts we've been warning about.

The Obama administration wants the sequestration to be as painful as possible, and as visible as possible, to further their political aims.  The best interests of American citizens are not part of their calculus...

Rope.
Tree.
Obama official.
Some assembly required. 

I Confess That I Must Re-Post This...

Via my lovely bride:

Debbie Still Says “No!”

But I say “Oh, hell yes!”

An Interesting Correlation...

One of my favorite AGW skeptics is Warren Meyer, proprietor of CoyoteBlog.  He's put together a presentation on AGW skepticism that includes the chart below.  It shows that life expectancy in any given country is quite closely correlated with that country's CO2 emissions (which are themselves a good proxy for fossil fuel consumption).  The more fossil fuels a country uses, the longer its citizens can expect to live.

He's not arguing that fossil fuel consumption directly causes longer lives, but rather that something(s) else is causing both the increase.  He doesn't say what, but I'd offer up prosperity and accumulated wealth as those causes.

A Tale of Two Dummys...

Via my mom:

I knew he reminded me of somebody famous...



On the left is the famous "Walter", Jeff Dunham's dummy.

The one on the right is Obama's dummy.

Nailed it.

The “Smarty Pants” Test...

My lovely bride requested that I take this “Smart or Stoopid”  test.  I guess she's worried about my diminished mental capacity.  I got a 28.  I have no idea what it's actually measuring, though – certainly not IQ!

Smile Signs...

Via my lovely bride:

Categorical Thinking...and the Climate Debate...

Via reader and friend Doug W., an article by Craig Loehle exploring a notion that's new to me, though when I google the term I get a few bazillion hits.  My engineer's brain translates that notion into “binary thinking” vs. “analog thinking”.  Some might say “black and white thinking” vs. “more nuanced thinking”.  What's new in this article is connecting categorical thinking to the way the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) debate is polarized.  A key bit:

Categorical thinking is common in life. It is a critical mental shortcut that brings order to the chaos of sensory input—I do not claim it to be a defect. If someone lies to us once, they are now in the category of liar. This may work for judging likely human behavior but one hurricane is not a trend. If a person is in the clergy, we classify them as good. If they exhibit some defect such as shoplifting, we throw them down to the pits. They are either a saint or not a saint. We don’t say that a politician in the other party is misguided or has different goals from us, we call them evil (and they call each other evil). If some small thing goes wrong on a date or at a wedding, the event is “ruined”. In religion you are either “saved” or not, there is evidently no in-between category of semi-saved or saved part of the time or improved.

This categorical thinking permeates the climate change debate. A premise in categorical thinking about the environment that goes back before the current debate is that natural is good and artificial is bad, where artificial means anything affected by humans. In the case of nature this means that wilderness is good and trees planted in rows are bad (though birds don’t necessarily mind the rows). The categorical mindset means that any touch by humans ruins the wilderness, so humans in the US are being progressively excluded from wilderness (roads closed, no snowmobiles, horses banned, etc.) from the wilderness that they are supposed to value so highly. In the climate debate, it goes like this: “There is no doubt that humans have caused warming over the past 50 years. Therefore we must act now.” The question is posed as whether the climate has change, a categorical question. And of course it has changed and of course humans have had some effect even if tiny. The fact that there is some influence of humans is taken to mean that all the bad things one can imagine will consequently follow. In real life no one imagines that if their stock portfolio is yielding 0.1% annually that they are making money and therefore they are going to become rich and therefore they are already rich, but this is how the climate debate plays out, perhaps because climate is not something anyone has direct experience of so it is an abstraction, a “thing” not a process or continuum.

Mr. Loehle's argument resonates with me, mostly in the way it helps explain the arguments of those credulous of AGW.  It's a good read, and not very long...

Laws of Nature...

Via my lovely bride:

Law of Mechanical Repair - After your hands become coated with grease, your nose will begin to itch and you'll have to pee.

Law of Gravity - Any tool, nut, bolt, screw, when dropped, will roll to the least accessible corner.

Law of Probability - The probability of being watched is directly proportional to the stupidity of your act.

Law of Random Numbers - If you dial a wrong number, you never get a busy signal and someone always answers.

Supermarket Law - As soon as you get in the smallest line, the cashier will have to call for help.

Variation Law - If you change lines (or traffic lanes), the one you were in will always move faster than the one you are in now.

Law of the Bath - When the body is fully immersed in water, the telephone rings.

Law of Close Encounters - The probability of meeting someone you know increases dramatically when you are with someone you don't want to be seen with.

Law of the Result - When you try to prove to someone that a machine won't work, it will.

Law of Biomechanics - The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the reach.

Law of the Theater & Hockey Arena - At any event, the people whose seats are furthest from the aisle, always arrive last. They are the ones who will leave their seats several times to go for food, beer, or the toilet and who leave early before the end of the performance or the game is over. The folks in the aisle seats come early, never move once, have long gangly legs or big bellies and stay to the bitter end of the performance. The aisle people also are very surly folk.

The Coffee Law - As soon as you sit down to a cup of hot coffee, your boss will ask you to do something which will last until the coffee is cold.

Murphy's Law of Lockers - If there are only 2 people in a locker room, they will have adjacent lockers.

Law of Physical Surfaces - The chances of an open-faced jam sandwich landing face down on a floor, are directly correlated to the newness and cost of the carpet or rug.

Law of Logical Argument - Anything is possible if you don't know what you are talking about.

Brown's Law of Physical Appearance - If the clothes fit, they're ugly.

Oliver's Law of Public Speaking - A closed mouth gathers no feet.

Wilson's Law of Commercial Marketing Strategy - As soon as you find a product that you really like, they will stop making it.

Doctors' Law - If you don't feel well, make an appointment to go to the doctor, by the time you get there you'll feel better... But don't make an appointment, and you'll stay sick. This has been proven over and over with taking children to the pediatrician.

Long experience shows that these laws are absolutes...

Lyman Filament Extruder II...

Inventors rule!

Most low-cost 3D printers use ABS plastic filament as the raw material from which they produce objects.  This raw material costs ten times what ABS costs in its more common form: pellets.  So Inventables sponsored a contest, with a $40,000 prize, for a low-cost machine that would turn ABS pellets into ABS filament.  Hugh Lyman won the contest with his Lyman Filament Extruder II, at right.

Awesome!

Yet Another Reason to Leave Southern California...

We're living in a fourth amendment exclusion zone...

RAW Image File Processing – in JavaScript

Nothing special about this package that I can see except for the fact that it's running in your browser.  Despite the fact that I've been working with web apps for over 10 years now, I'm still blown away that they can do compute-intensive things like image processing and cryptography, in an interpreted language like JavaScript...

Flat UI Toolkit...

Yup, yet another web UI toolkit.  This one is for the trendy new “flat UI” – which looks just like the very first UIs I ever saw on a color screen, way back in the early '80s.  Everything old is new again...

Oh, Please! Pretty Please with Sugar On It!!!

Oh, please let this work!

Superconducting Gets Better...

Mainly in the sense of larger current capacity through engineered materials (versus homogenous superconducting material).  Engineered materials of all kinds have been revolutionizing all sorts of things in the past 50 years or so, from lumber (plywood, engineered composite beams) to electronics (integrated circuits, printed circuit boards)...

Which Hurts More?

Giving birth or getting kicked in the balls?  The age-old question has been settled:

Women always say that giving birth is much more painful than a guy getting kicked in the cojones.

They are wrong, and here's the proof.

A year or so after giving birth, a woman will often say, "It might be nice to have another child."

You never, ever hear a guy say, "You know, I think I would like another kick in the cojones."

Fly Like a Bird...

Well, more like a brick with fins.  Reader Simi L. passed this along, saying “This certainly fits into my definition of insanity!  Question: I wonder why they wear helmets?  I guess they are to hold their video cameras...”

Simi says insane.  I say: that looks like fun!  Debbie says: No!

DTrace...

A nice resource for using DTrace on Macs, BSD, or Solaris.  DTrace can be used for many things, but I know it mainly for performance troubleshooting...

Palate Cleanser for This Morning...

This story is wonderful from the perspective of both participants...

Solving a Rubik's Cube the Hard Way...

While juggling:

Meet Slightly Loony, Nickname “Sly”...

Not me (also known as “Slightly Loony”, or “Utterly Loony” to my lovely bride); this time we're talking about our new offroading chariot: our brand-spanking-new 2013 Toyota FJ Cruiser.  I took this picture today, before the first of many modifications we're planning to make.  Miki (our youngest field spaniel) believes he owns this new vehicle, which he has approved of after his first ride in it.  He and Race (our border collie) will be going with us on our first big adventure in this thing, in July – we'll be heading out to see the wildflowers in the San Juan Mountains of southeastern Colorado.

I'll post here from time to time describing the modifications I'm making to Sly.

The first modification will be a very simple one: I'm going to find a place to mount our PLB (personal locator beacon), shown at left.  If you're not familiar with these devices, you can read all about them at the preceding link.  Basically they allow you to broadcast a distress signal from anywhere on the planet.  This signal is relayed to the appropriate search and rescue organizations, and they will (we sincerely hope!) respond.  We offroad in places where cell phones don't work.  That leaves us with just a few alternatives: ham radio, satellite phone, and PLB.  The PLBs have several advantages, including:

• (relatively) low cost, one time (no subscription like satellite phones)
• reliability and testability (you can be sure the device works)
• truly global coverage, 24 x 7 (ham radio is shaky on this front)
• small, portable devices (this one is 6" x 2.5" x 1.5", and weighs a few ounces)
• direct relay of distress calls to responders (with ham radio and satellite phones, you have to call someone and have them relay your issue to the search and rescue folks - which they have to locate
• direct relay of your location to the search and rescue responders (the device has a GPS to locate you, and it broadcasts your position to the satellite)

We found these advantages compelling, and decided to go the PLB route.  After some research on the web, I chose the PLB-350C  “SARLink”, made by ACR Electronics.  We received it a couple of days ago.  It took an hour or so to register the device with the NOAA (the government agency that routes distress calls), and ran an end-to-end test on it, which passed with flying colors.  The device has a “self-test” button that runs a diagnostic and then sends a test message to the satellite.  This test message is recorded on a web site (so I can verify the results), and optionally it can be configured to send an SMS or email message to let me know the test passed.

Something to know if you're considering a PLB: these devices are for use in extremis – not for running out of gas, or even for a run-of-the-mill mechanical breakdown.  You use a PLB only when you believe you are in mortal danger.  This could happen because of (say) a transmission problem that leaves you stranded at high altitude, and you don't have survival gear to make it through an Arctic-like night.  It could also happen because you're injured, and can't walk out of the back-country.  But if you use the PLB to summon a cup of coffee, some fuel, or because you're lonely – be aware that the search and rescue organizations would be most seriously displeased with you, and are quite likely to send you a bill with 5 or 6 significant digits in the dollar value!

On past trips, including to the San Juan Mountains, I've been extremely careful to not do anything at all risky when on a road or trail not often traveled.  The older we've gotten, the more I apply this policy – as we're less able, with age, to extricate ourselves from some hairy situation.  The PLB addresses one aspect of this: if we ever get into serious trouble, this device could save our bacon.  Other modifications we're planning will address other aspects: making Sly more rugged and resistant to the hazards of the back-country, and improving our ability to get ourselves unstuck (always a hazard on the rough sorts of “roads” we like to go on).  All of these things put together will increase our confidence that we can safely venture to the wild, remote places that we love to go to...

Fast Solution for Graph Laplacians...

I first ran across graph Laplacians way back in the '70s when I was trying (and failing!) to build an electronics simulator.  This was long before SPICE was available on microprocessors.  The algorithms I read about back then for solving graph Laplacians were far more complicated than this new algorithm...

Inefficient Rulers...

Golomb Rulers and Costas Arrays – two notions completely new to me, but fun (in a geekly, mathematical sort of way)...

Big Meteorite Found in Antarctica...

The biggest one in over 25 years.  Scientists have been scouring Antarctica for meteorites for years, taking advantage of the easy spotting (black meteorite on white snow) and pristine condition.  Most of Antarctica is not only uninhabited, it's also unvisited – the most remote areas of Earth are there...

Even I Can Understand This...

If you know me, then you know that I am not at all interested in sports.  Any sport.  I know so little about sports that I can't even identify most sports when I see them being played.

But I understand this:


On rare occasions these days, I feel some hope for the survival of the human species.  Watching this brought that hope back, at least for a few minutes until I watched a video of Obama declaring that he wasn't a dictator.  I should make a page with a bunch of these on it, to help me regain my spirits on such occasions...

Map of National (and Some States/Provinces) Wealth...

Wealth of a country (or other geopolitical entity) is a notoriously slippery datum to measure.  It isn't enough to convert per capita income to a common currency and compare them, because the cost of living varies tremendously from place to place.  Furthermore, in some political systems (I'm looking at you, Mother Russia, Mexico, China, Nigeria, India, et al), pervasive corruption means that significant fractions of their economies are underground and therefore not even in the official per capita income data.  What's a poor statistician to do?

One possibility is to find a proxy for that which you're trying to measure.  Ideally the proxy would be perfectly proportional to the value you actually want to measure, and could be measured without perturbing the value you're trying to measure.  In the case of the wealth of countries, some scientists have proposed the prevalence of outdoor artificial lighting at night as a proxy.  Their thinking is that the wealthier any country is, the more outdoor artificial lighting they'll use.  And very conveniently, outdoor lighting levels can be easily measured by existing satellites, hundreds of which image the surface of the earth every day.

The map below is the result of an attempt to make exactly this measurement.  As I cast my eye over the map, relatively few of the results look unexpected to me.  For instance, I wouldn't have guessed Greenland was so prosperous, nor Paraguay so poor.

Visualization: Migration Between Countries...

Peoplemovin is a well-done interactive visualization that lets you see migration to or from any given country.  For instance, in the clip below I've clicked on the Phillipines on the right, to see where people migrate to the Philippines from. 

There were lots of surprises for me as I browsed around this visualization.  In the example case, I never would have guessed that the top three sources for immigrants to the Philippines were the U.S., China, and the U.K.  I spent about nine months (in several stretches) in the Philippines when I was in the U.S. Navy, way back in the '70s, and I did run into quite a few U.S. military retirees.  I wonder if that's where most of these immigrants come from?

Publicly-Avaliable Data Sources...

A nice, partially organized collection of free datasets, publicly available on the Internet (either via download or API).  The sources include private companies, educational organizations, non-governmental organizations, and governments.  There's a lot of interesting stuff in here on a wide variety of subjects...

Zopfli Compression...

A new open source, Apache licensed general purpose Deflate-compatible compression algorithm.  This one consumes more CPU time to get a little better compression; it's aimed mostly at web sites delivering a large amount of static content.

Sinkhole Swallows a Man in His Bed...

This is a frightening scenario that actually happened last night.  You're asleep in bed, and all of a sudden an enormous sinkhole opens up underneath your bedroom.  Your entire bedroom – including you! – is swallowed up.  You scream for help, and it arrives – but they can find no sign that you ever existed. 

Definitely the stuff of nightmares...

Science Fiction Becoming Reality...

Direct connections between brains and computers are getting ever closer...

Court of Public Opinion...

I recently blogged about the spat between Elon Musk (of Tesla Motors) and the New York Times.  Musk was convinced that the Times was lying about the results of a test drive they made in a Tesla car, smearing the company's good name and reputation in the process.  Instead of suing the Times through our court system, Musk appealed to the “court of public opinion” by publishing an open letter to the public.  His letter was publicized by hundreds of news sites, newspapers, and blogs.  In the resulting kerfuffle, the New York Times reconsidered its stance and reversed its previous support for their reporter, withdrawing the story.  Elon Musk won that “case” in a manner far more convincing to the public than anything I can imagine emerging from a case pursued in the traditional courts.

I thought that case was interesting, which is why I blogged about it.  Security expert and cryptographer Bruce Schneier saw it as one example of a pattern of behaviors enabled by the Internet.  It's part of the rise of an alternative system of jurisprudence.  An excerpt from his recent article on Wired:

The court of public opinion is an alternative system of justice. It’s very different from the traditional court system: This court is based on reputation, revenge, public shaming, and the whims of the crowd. Having a good story is more important than having the law on your side. Being a sympathetic underdog is more important than being fair. Facts matter, but there are no standards of accuracy. The speed of the internet exacerbates this; a good story spreads faster than a bunch of facts.

...

The court of public opinion has significant limitations. It works better for revenge and justice than for dispute resolution. It can punish a company for unfairly firing one of its employees or lying in an automobile test drive, but it’s less effective at unraveling a complicated patent litigation or navigating a bankruptcy proceeding.

Mr. Schneier is onto something here.  I found myself thinking along these lines recently, as I'm currently in a dispute with a large environmentalist organization.  Seeking justice in a court of law is an intimidating, expensive, and very uncertain proposition.  Seeking justice in the court of public opinion just might be a better alternative – though not one that occurred to me immediately.  Apparently I'm more of a hidebound traditionalist than I thought I was :)

Cat Troubles...in the 1400s...

At right is a 15th century manuscript with unmistakeable feline paw prints on it, in ink.  The cat must have walked over the page while the ink was still wet, no doubt frustrating the heck out of the scribe.

Below is another example of cats messing with scribe's heads – and this one decided to curse the cat in writing (translated from the original Latin):

Here is nothing missing, but a cat urinated on this during a certain night. Cursed be the pesty cat that urinated over this book during the night in Deventer and because of it many others [other cats] too. And beware well not to leave open books at night where cats can come.

All cat lovers will instantly identify with these :)  Owning cats most definitely has its rewards, but not all is purring and affection...

Death to the Patent Trolls?

The advent of “patent troll” companies has seriously perverted the already-perverted world of intellectual property law.  These companies acquire portfolios of patents (or the rights to those patents) with the intent to prosecute companies alleged to be infringing them.  The key word there is “alleged”.  Patent trolls are frequently accused (almost certainly accurately) of bringing actions that they are sure to lose – because they know that the accused companies will often (most of the time, in fact) pay a settlement just to make the lawsuit go away.

Many have noted that the patent trolls are enabled by a feature of American law: that the winner of a lawsuit like this still pays their own legal expenses.  Under English law, the loser pays for both sides legal expenses.  This “loser pays” system greatly discourages frivolous lawsuits, as the side with a good defense is willing to pay for that defense, knowing that if they win the other side is going to pay the entire expense.

Now that same “loser pays” system is being proposed for the U.S. – but only for suits brought by patent trolls.  Defining a patent troll is trickier than it might appear.  Here's an article about the proposed bill, and here's the EFF's statement of support for it...

Visualizing Formerly Invisible Motion (and More)...

Through a technique dubbed “Eulerian magnification”, computer scientists are getting better at producing stunning, informative visualizations.  The video tells the story, and there are more details in the accompanying story.  This search will show you many more videos produced via Eulerian magnification.  What an awesome new tool!

World's Nerdiest Marriage Proposal?

I was skeptical until I read it.  This is one physicist's written marriage proposal to another physicist.  Partial clip below; click on the link to read the whole thing.  Awesome!

Changes...

For nearly 20 years now, “Siggy” (more formally, “Eight Sigmas”) has been a big part of our life.  We purchased this stock '96 Toyota LandCruiser in 1995 using some of the money we made from our stock options after Stac's IPO.  We had to order it (and wait several months to get it!) because we wanted the four-wheeling features that were then available (most especially the differential locks) from Toyota. 

Siggy was our ride on many adventures throughout the Western U.S.  It took us in safety and comfort on freeways and on extremely rugged back-country roads.  Perhaps the most challenging thing we ever did with Siggy was a wonderful vacation in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado (where we're going again this summer).  With Debbie, my dad, and two dogs (Mo'i and Lea) we roamed all over those mountains – never meeting a trail we couldn't take, and never feeling the least at risk.

But poor Siggy is now too old and decrepit to safely take us into the back-country any more.  With nearly 300,000 miles on it (with never a major repair!), the engine is now on its last legs.  Replacing the engine would be quite expensive, and the rest of the vehicle is worn as well.  Really the entire drive train should be replaced, and that just didn't seem practical.  So last week we researched all our options and chose a new ride: a 2013 Toyota FJ Cruiser, bright orange and white.  This time we're not going to keep it a stock vehicle – we bought a very basic model (just the off-roading package) and we're going to add aftermarket gear to make it a really capable and safe off-road vehicle.

I drove Siggy to the dealer (in El Cajon) to meet its fate as a trade-in.  It was a sad drive; Siggy is just chock full of wonderful memories for us.  I shed a few tears, and at one point almost turned around to take it back home.  But what would we do with an old, beat-up LandCruiser?  In the end, I decided I'd hope that somebody on a tight budget would buy Siggy and fix it all up in a labor of love.  I hope that's what happens, anyway...

Asperatus Clouds...

...over New Zealand.  Via APOD, of course.

Economics 101, with Humor...

A good primer on the absurdities of the sequestration hysteria:

Challenging Authorities...

Very interesting montage of individual Americans challenging checkpoint authorities...

Coronal Rain on the Sun...

The Solar Dynamics Observatory captured the photos used to make this movie last summer.  When you play the video below, you're seeing things about 360 times faster than they actually occurred – ten hours of actual events seen in about four minutes.  Via APOD, of course...

Do-It-Yourself Weapons of the Syrian Rebels...

This web site has a lot of photos like the one at right, showing the surprisingly sophisticated improvised weapons being put together by the Syrian rebels.  Armored vehicles, artillery shells, rockets, remote-controlled machine guns, “technicals”, and more – somehow not what came to mind when I saw the title.  I'll have to revise my preconceived notions of the capabilities of your average Syrian young man...

Cool Stop-Motion Short Film...

Very cool little film.  Watching this reminded me of the old Nick Park flicks (esp. Wallace and Grommit).  On this one, I wonder how they managed to keep all those positions so accurately...

Hmmm... Looks Like We're Not Running Out of Oil...

Every year a new round of hydrocarbon doomsayers predicts the imminent exhaustion of the planet's supply of crude oil – and the U.S. supply even earlier.  Every year reality proves them wrong.  Someday, of course, the doomsayers will be right – but it looks like someday is a good many years away...

Awesome Castings of Ant Nests...

Retired entomologist Walter Tschinkel from Florida makes these ant casts from aluminum.  See video below for details on how he does it.  Awesome!

RightPosters...

John L. runs a site called RightPosters, featuring lots of posters designed to appeal (so far as I can tell:) to anyone who is not a liberal or progressive.  The example at right combines one of my favorite Churchill quotes with a great photo of him.  John wrote me to ask if I'd consider linking to him, and after looking over his offerings I'm more than happy to do so.  I haven't purchased anything from his site, so if any of my readers happen to have experience with it, please let me know...

Diaphananthe pellucida...

This African orchid via BPOD, of course...

M51...

M51, the “Whirlpool Galaxy”, as seen by the Hubble Telescope.  Full resolution version here.  Via APOD, of course...

20 Reasons for Democrats to be Embarrassed...

This list of epic fails by the Democratic Party and its members is good fodder for anyone who isn't a liberal or progressive.  An example:

The American Protective League and The Palmer Raids (1919-1921): Under the leadership of Woodrow Wilson, criticizing the government became a crime and a fascist organization, the American Protective League was formed to spy on and even arrest fellow Americans for being insufficiently loyal to the government. More than 100,000 Americans were arrested, with less than 1% of them ever being found guilty of any kind of crime. 

On the other hand, coming up with an equivalently damning list of epic fails for the Republicans shouldn't be very difficult, either.  Neither party has the epic fail monopoly.

Can anyone imagine a list of “epic successes” for either party?  I think it would be quite difficult to get 20 serious candidates for such a list...

Earthquake!

Well, yesterday, a little teensy one, and quite a long way away.  What makes this one interesting is that the seismometer in our house captured it (see below).

USGS says that the earthquake occurred on 2/23 at 04:40:14 UTC.  Our seismometer shows the first burst of primary wave at 04:40:33 – 19 seconds later.  The location of the earthquake (USGS) is 109 kilometers from our house, yielding an average primary wave speed of 5.75 km/s, well within norms for primary waves.  By collecting lots of data like this, for many earthquakes and from many locations, USGS is building up a huge dataset that will let them learn a great deal about the composition of the earth's crust in the areas where they have good coverage (Southern California is one of them)...

Results: Oh-Oh...

Reader Simi L. sent me a link to a brand-new episode of Roadrunner vs. Wile E. Coyote, with modern computer graphics.  That led me to several others, and a few good laughs this morning:

Political Correctness in Our Military...

Reader and friend Doug S. (who is a U.S. Air Force veteran) passed this link along.  This is the sort of thing that started the German military along the path to its current “toothless tiger” status.  It's also what happens when an entrenched bureaucracy tackles a problem: common sense and pragmatism are thrown out the window; mindless rules and perverse incentives rule.

I hear the drums of doom.  They don't sound so very far away...

Retronaut...

Retronaut is a fascinating site full of old things, like the British WWII recruiting poster at right...