Monday Math Madness
Blinkdagger and Wild About Math take turns hosting a contest called Monday Math Madness. Try it out!
Posted at 06:21AM Apr 14, 2008 by AceOfSpuds in General |
Official harbinger of Spring
Never mind that the thermometer says "60," It must be spring -- my dalmatian is basking in the sun in the yard.
Posted at 12:56PM Apr 03, 2008 by AceOfSpuds in General |
Anatomy of Disenfranchisement
Over at MathMojo we learn about a way that bean counters are defunding a valuable after-school program with little or no protest.
I'm sure this is but one dirty trick of many. Still, it's illuminating...and chilling.
Posted at 09:11AM Apr 02, 2008 by AceOfSpuds in General |
That's so bad it's not even worth cheese...
...which I suppose is a colorful statement I could work into my vocabulary. But in the context of my curernt day, it's my dog's attitude to ear drops. He sees his favorite treat--cheese--in one hand, and the bottle of ear flush in the other, and beats a (somewhat conflicted) retreat.
Posted at 11:38AM Mar 25, 2008 by AceOfSpuds in General |
When not to answer...
Last year, every morning around the breakfast table, we did a page-a-day Mad Lib calendar (which is probably why, in his teacher's words, my second grader "smokes everyone in class when it comes to parts of speech.") We're also on our second year of Will Shortz' PuzzleMaster presents, so he's no stranger to word play.
He frequently mashes words together, spoonerizes, etc. Which brings us to what he did with tonight's dinner entree, "Popcorn Shrimp."
First question: "Dad, what's Shropcorn?" I answer "I have no idea."
Next question" "What's Pimp?" "Hmm...Shropcorn Pimp, huh?" :-D
Posted at 07:38PM Mar 24, 2008 by AceOfSpuds in Parenting |
Mash it up!
Next week I'm off to mash-up camp.
The invention of the mash-up is a great thing. It's an easy-to-understand manifestation of Web Services, but with an egalitarian, tinkertoy aspect that is reminiscent of the early underlying philosophy of UNIX: build tools that could be stuck together with pipes and scripts to create bigger tools.
Considering the eminent Tim Berners-Lee recently called the semantic web's killer app a "mega-mash-up," it sounds like this camp will be the place to be. See you there, perhaps?
Posted at 03:01PM Mar 12, 2008 by AceOfSpuds in General |
Question of the day
Why are power companies called "so-and-so Edison" when the A/C technology comes from Nikola Tesla?
updated: OK, I get it. Edison got there first, and founded the companies bearing his name. Although he eventually lost the fight (by some accounts, much nastier than the wars between Betamax vs. VHS and more recently HD DVD vs Blu-Ray) his name survives because the companies switched over, with no feeling of being compelled to rename to "Tesla" or "Westinghouse."
Interestingly, conEdison was still supplying DC power to customers until last year.
Posted at 03:00PM Mar 07, 2008 by AceOfSpuds in General |
What is destiny?
Increasingly, we learn that many things are not really in our control. My recent reading has attacked that from several angles. The most fascinating of the bunch was Predictably Irrational, by Dan Ariely The book's approach is similar to another one I found particularly interesting, Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think by Brian Wansink. Both are built on the authors' experiments and show similar types of systematic, cognitive errors. We are swayed far more easily, and by far more influencers, than most of us believe; indeed, in some cases even knowing about the tendency to make a particular error does not prevent a person from making it.
And then there's the influence of genes. Reading Fat Politics: The Real Story Behind America's Obesity Epidemic, (Eric Oliver) and The Fattening of America, (Eric Finkelstein and Laurie Zuckerman)--two interesting books with very different approaches to the topic, by the way--we learn, among other things, that humans naturally are attracted to fat, sweet and salty foods, and that populations who survived repeated famines did so because they had a greater than average tendency to store calories on their bodies. Hence, given an environment in which there is an abundance of calories, more and more people will get fat, because storing calories as fat is what we've evolved to do.
Which brings me to a Nightline episode about genetic testing. What strikes me most is in the summary of the article:
"We both fear and love the idea that somehow our genomes are us, that everything about us is defined by this long sequence of as CS GS and TS. You know, it's just not true," said Greely. "For most of us, the events that have happened during our lifetimes our parents' efforts for us, the friends' we've made, the jobs we've had, the good and bad luck we've had that's more important in who we are than what genes we're born with. And that's really important to remember."
Why does this strike me in particular? Recently I ran into the (now rather famous) Last Lecture of Randy Pausch. I found that presentation moving for a number of reasons, of course, and the version I linked to is the best one because it includes the introduction and the speakers who went after him.
Because Randy was born the same year I was, I started to think about what might have been different if I'd made the same choice of college he did (and managed to choose computer science as a major). I first imagined what path I'd have had through college if I'd had a strong, charismatic advisor like he did. And then I started to imagine what else would have been different. My guess is that my satisfaction with life would be about the same, but none of the particulars: Different graduate school. Different jobs. Different city. Different friends. Different hobbies. Different wife. Different kid. And given the relationships that caused me to seek therapy, quite possibly a different personality. All still shaped by my genetics (e.g. I'm sure any choices I made would have been limited by my struggle with Crohn's disease), but my life would bear little or no resemblance to the one I have now. And every difference growing out of ONE choice.
Fortunately for all of us, most of the choices we make on a daily basis are not momentous. And perhaps it's the case that we often don't recognize until afterward which ones really did define our lives. Most likely, that too is fortunate.
Posted at 09:58AM Mar 04, 2008 by AceOfSpuds in General |
Whoever said that video games contribute to social isolation.,..
...hasn't seen my kid and his friend playing "Lego Star Wars."
True, the tendency towards isolation can happen at home (especially if kids play in their own rooms) but as soon as you put another person in the room, things have a tendency to change. A significant social aspect develops when these games are available in a group environment.
But today what I'm seeing goes further than the usual kibitzing (with a single-player game) or competition (when the game sets you up as opponents). The two-player mode features fully cooperative game play: rather than playing against one another, both players operate independent characters who work together toward the goal.
What my wife and I are finding most interesting is that their dialog is alternating between talking about the game ("you need to be someone who can use the force," or "those guys are on our side,") and improvised, in-character dialog. I will not try to replicate the latter, because I simply can't do it justice.
Posted at 05:57PM Feb 20, 2008 by AceOfSpuds in General |
It's Not Easy Being Green
as this article from the New Yorker about carbon footprint shows. There are some very unexpected results, e.g. it's better from a CO2 standpoint for a UK resident to buy roses from far-off Kenya rather than nearby Holland, or a New Yorker to drink wine from Bordeaux rather than Napa.
And the moral of the story? The most effective way ever found for dealing with pollution is to create a trading market. It's often politically unappealing because it feels like letting people "pay to be bad." But if there were a market in greenhouse gases, environmental groups would have a far easier path to leverage: instead of using their relatively paltry budgets to lobby--which often amounts to a winner-take-all game that they lose--every dollar used to buy up a ton of "right to pollute" reduces supply (and therefore raises the cost) of emitting greenhouse gases. This would have exactly the effect they want: putting pressure on businesses to stop polluting, and rainforest nations to stop allowing their forest to be razed. But it requires getting past the "moral" aspects of environmentalism and into realpolitik.
Posted at 09:44AM Feb 20, 2008 by AceOfSpuds in General |
Authority run amok
One of the quintessential American "stories," according to Robert Reich, is "The Rot at the Top." At different times in history, "The Rot" meant different things: King George III, Robber Barons, "Special Interests...."
For part of my childhood (in the south during the civil rights movement) a prevalent "Rot" story was about "the establishment." Although I don't have a complete allergy to authority, anything that smacks of impersonal authority sets my teeth on edge. Always has...from the grade school gym coach who insisted I attend gym class every day even though I had been injured on his watch and was still splinted, to the office autocrat who tried to keep us from posting anything on the inside of our cubicle walls. [updated...the cubicle story was from 20 years ago. From my first day at Sun, I worked in an office.]
But today I saw one that was beyond the pale: a sheriff's deputy dumping a paraplegic out of a wheelchair (video) breaking two of his ribs. That struck me as the height of idiocy and arrogance...and to add insult to injury: (a) his arrest was on a traffic violation; (b) another deputy is seen on the tape, smiling as though he finds the whole thing amusing, and (c) the department seemed not to know about the incident despite it being caught on their own surveillance tape.
The deputy was placed on leave, and will probably take most of the blame for this. But we as a society are indebted to people who are willing to take law enforcement jobs--I told you I wasn't allergic to authority!--and I think a lot of the problem here could be traced to insufficient training and a poor work culture. That might be laid at the feet of the head honcho. (Then again, I can see an underfunded department having to decide between enough bodies, or enough training.) Sad, any way you look at it.
p.s Apologies if you can't see the video. I've complained to cnn.com several times along the lines of "YouTube video shows on my browser; why don't you support it?" but no joy. Tell all your friends to complain and let's see where we get.
Posted at 05:20PM Feb 12, 2008 by AceOfSpuds in General |
What are we Thinking??!
A CNN Quick Poll (not scientific, I know) asks "Do you support seeking the death penalty against 9/11 suspects?" Currently the votes are running about 3 to 1 in favor.
Yikes. I realize that because there's a death penalty involved (and because we're talking about actions which killed thousands of people) the water is very murky here. Perhaps I'll explore why another time. Right now, I think the major issue to consider is that seeking the death penalty against a foreign national is a political act. As such, it needs an unsentimental examination.
On the plus side, convicting these guys and executing them would probably feel good to many Americans. (In fact, I think the question that most people were really answering was "Do you think convicted 9/11 conspirators deserve the death penalty?")
[update: publicagenda.org reports that the level of support does in fact depend heavily on the wording, which they call "a classic sign of conflicted or uncertain public feelings on this issue." I take that in support of my assertion above.]
On the minus side, however:
- We would be creating martyrs...and fanning the rage of many people who are disgusted with the way the US has conducted itself towards Islamic nations.
- Do we expect other countries, and citizens of other countries, to put their trust in our legal system? Maybe once upon a time, but given our post-9/11 track record, that's a tall order.
- We would be putting our trust in a military tribunal, which has weaker safeguards than what we normally accord citizens. And even in our normal justice system, there are plenty of wrong convictions to be found.
This last perhaps explains the way capital cases turn out in my home state of California: it seems that many people are sentenced to death, but few are actually executed. Jurors get to decide the question of whether the defendant deserves the death penalty, without being responsible for considering any downstream negative consequences to the decision. If no death sentences are carried out, the citizenry gets the feelings of having given out the ultimate punishment, without having to worry about the downsides of putting someone to death. Clever.
Posted at 08:00AM Feb 12, 2008 by AceOfSpuds in General |
Tom Lantos 1928-2008
CNN reports that he passed away today. May his memory be a source of blessing.
Posted at 08:26AM Feb 11, 2008 by AceOfSpuds in General |
Analyzing Traffic using Cell Phones
Today on KCBS I heard about an experiment being done by UC Berkeley students using GPS-enabled cellphones to measure freeway traffic flow real time. In a couple of years they hope to have a system up and running.
I'm looking forward to using it someday. But pride insists that I point readers to this press release about James Gosling's talk at JavaOne in 2003. Alas, I can't find the video online. But I was his last guest presenter; I showed a proof-of-concept using JXTA peer-to-peer technology to measure and map real-time traffic flow. (Of course, as I point out in the video, budget prevented me from using real cars; the clients were simulated.)
The major points of the demo were (a) to demonstrate that peer-to-peer is not synonymous with music-stealing file sharing, and (b) to show the value proposition that underlies peer-to-peer computing: data obtained from any single car is not very useful, but
the aggregated data becomes extremely valuable to everyone when many
peers share similar data. And the more people join, the more accurate and valuable the shared data become. (This is probably why the experimenters ran 100 cars over a short length of I880--if the density of cars is too low, you don't get enough data points to wash out individual variance.)
In the end, I wonder whether this application will wind up on cellphones, or whether GPS nav systems will become ubiquitous enough that the functionality ends up in there instead. Some nav systems allow real-time traffic alerts, but I don't think it's worth paying extra for the service: the traffic alerts are generated using our conventional means and perhaps don't deserve the name "real-time." Once a substantial fraction of cars are instrumented, though, the real-time flow service can be implemented. That would be worth paying for, in my opinion; it might even be reason to get a nav system for use on routine trips (rather than getting one only when I rent a car). Revenue opportunities abound, at least for the target market that resembles me. :-)
Posted at 02:26PM Feb 08, 2008 by AceOfSpuds in General |
Throw away that biohazard material, dude!
The big, slimy baseball-and-steroids mess just got slimier. From New York Daily News:
"Brian McNamee turned over physical evidence last month to federal investigators that he believes will show Roger Clemens used performance-enhancing drugs, according to McNamee's lawyers "
The evidence is said to be "vials with traces of steroids and growth hormone, as well as blood-stained syringes and gauze pads that may contain the Rocket's DNA"
Who in their right mind keeps those things? By now I would think everyone knows that you put used syringes in a sharps container and take it to a disposal site. Or even better, use a gizmo like this one to destroy the needle, and throw the syringe in the garbage. (Although that particular one only works for small-gauge needles) Gauze pads can go in the garbage also...who do you know who takes off a used band-aid, or a paper towel they used after cutting a finger in the kitchen, and does anything else with it?
I can only think of two reasons for not disposing of this stuff (especially the gauze pads!) immediately:
- Fear of detection. But there are lots of valid reasons for throwing away blood-stained gauze, and nobody has ever asked me questions when I bought a sharps container or brought syringes in for disposal. Diabetics can easily throw away a hundred syringes or more each month.
- Hanging onto evidence in case you're caught and need to bargain.
Which do you think is more likely in this case?
Posted at 10:46AM Feb 07, 2008 by AceOfSpuds in General |