Category: Uncategorized

observation of the day

In a comment @ TBogg’s on public displays of religiosity, this gem was revealed:

Knowing that many people will lie and claim that they are regular church attendees, certain researchers — rather than asking people if they attended — instead looked to studies done by the NIH (or CDC or someone) about allergies. The people in these studies had to record where they were every hour of every day of the week. When looking at *these* data, church attendance was determined to be at something like 15% or less (I don’t quite remember).

I’d love to see that study.

More on over-reporting here, here, and here. Any way you slice it, it’s no majority.

this explains a lot

Like why I never got math.

True story: I learned the basics the old-fashioned way but as I began to get a firm grasp of it, this stuff was tossed at me, along with set theory (Feynmann has a great piece in this in his collected letters: he thought it was confusing and unhelpful). Then once I was good and confused — they switched back.

Gah. There’s a special place in Hell for educational theorists.

departures and possible arrivals

The cat who has been boarding with us since June of last year, who is currently perched on my stomach, leaves on Monday. She has totally entwined herself into our lives, and will be missed. She doesn’t go to her home in Kyrgyzstan as her people now live in England. So first to Amsterdam, then home. Long trip for a creature who won’t actually know what’s happening.

The decision now is to either foster some cats, so we have the experience of younger cats who don’t really get their claws into us or take on the full commitment. I’m conflicted: I can see doing both actually, if we can keep the peace between the resident(s) and transients. I don’t look forward to geriatric cats, having dealt with that recently, but that’s some time off, I suppose. Unless we get adopted by a mature cat in the meantime.

timing

Software Kit for iPhone, iPod Touch Applications Set for February 2008:

Glenn Fleishman, TidBITS: ‘While there was no consensus in the existing Mac developer community as to whether Apple would ever fully open up the iPhone platform for third-party applications — a view reinforced by Apple’s early reluctance to make any commitment — Jobs stated quite clearly at the D: All Things Digital conference in May 2007 that Apple would open the iPhone up.’

Which makes more sense? To release an SDK in the summer before the launch of Leopard, with all the resources that is consuming? Or wait a few months, sell a million handsets (which will get developers salivating), and release a more complete SDK for a well-tested platform?

the canonical Western?

The Williamsburg Public Library’s pick for today? Riders of the Purple Sage, by Zane Grey:

I’ll grant that Riders is not the Great American Novel. Grey’s colorful language has made him the target of punsters, who mock him as the “writer of the purple prose.” The dialogue is famously dreadful. The characters are odd and unnatural—in fact, the animals have more personality than the humans. And the book’s anti-Mormonism is so strident that some readers are permanently put off. But so what? It is vivid and weird and interesting. In it you will find—and I’ll open this up to argument—the most spectacular sense of place in American fiction.

My grandfather was a big fan of Grey and prized The U.P. Trail above the others, from what his son tells me. I read Riders a few months back: I agree with the indictments above. A craftsman, he wasn’t, but he could spin a ripping yarn. The anti-Mormonism is excessive, but having read Under the Banner of Heaven around the same time, it didn’t bother me too much. And the dialog and characterizations are a bit off, with archetypes — the righteous gunfighter with a personal score to settle — standing in for flesh and blood people. But it’s not the Tay Bridge Disaster, by any stretch.

I just read the Border Trilogy, Westerns of a more modern era, with more modern themes and substantially more nuanced writing, and they both have their strengths. McCarthy is obviously a better craftsman, but Grey has a love of his genre, the atmosphere of his books, that makes his other sins forgivable. I can’t say that about all his books, though.

fair game?

Senator pants on fire:

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — It appears Senator Mitch McConnell may have misled WHAS11 News when he told us nobody on his staff had anything to do with an effort to dig into the background of a 12-year-old boy.

An aide to McConnell has admitted he sent an e-mail to Washington reporters, urging them to look into Graeme Frost, the boy who urged Congress to override the president’s veto of an expanded child health care bill. He’s been a target of conservative bloggers ever since.

How Rusty Limbaugh Takes Care of Things:

Indeed.

I’ve had journalists tell me this. “Well, we’re journalists.” Why are you immune? Why are you immune to the same kind of destructive reporting and behavior that you dish out? You know, we have practiced — I’ve practiced it once. I am not going to tell you the story because I’m don’t want to give it away, and I would have to mention names, and I’m not going to mention names. But there was a cover story on me coming out of one of the big news magazines, and it was going to totally mischaracterize me and what I do and how I do it. And we found out who was writing it and made a couple phone calls to the person writing it. And we said, “You know what? We’re going to find out where your kids go to school. We’re going to find out who you knocked up in high school. We’re going to find out what drugs you used. We’re going to find out where you go to drink and do — we’re gonna find out how you paid for your house. We’re going to do — and we’re going to do exact — and we’re going to say that, you know what? You are no different than Al Goldstein. You both masturbate. You’re no different than Al Goldstein, and you’re both journalists, and so forth.”

And the guy started screaming on the phone, just went — “You can’t do that.” We said, “Watch us.” And it changed the tone of the story by about 60 percent, I would say, from what it was going to be. But nobody does that to these people. Nobody does it to them. And that would be so much fun. But I’d need to be wearing body armor every day. Oh, no question, these people are playing for keeps.

I wonder how this guy paid for his house, where he drinks, where his kids go to school:

Don Stewart, an aide to McConnell, admits he sent an e-mail to Washington reporters.

Any reason why he shouldn’t have his countertops scrutinized? And I wish someone would deliver the goods on the Mr “talent on loan from Viagra.”

Hot enough for ya?

Water Running Out in Atlanta (TreeHugger):

It has been called “the Rodney Dangerfield of natural disasters,” because it gets no respect, compared to floods or hurricanes, but every record in Georgia’s history has been broken buy the current one. “People pay attention to hurricanes,” [state climatologist] David Stooksbury said. “They pay attention to tornadoes and earthquakes. But a drought will sneak up on you.” Lake Lanier, the main source of water for Atlanta, could be dry in 90 days.

I did a double-take when I read that last line. It’s a big lake. They can’t mean dry, as in no water at all: I think they must mean too low to use for hydro power or to let into the river for the municipalities downstream. Right?


View Larger Map

Ah, when they mean is that in 3 months, the hydro turbines stop turning and part of the river below the dam will be dry. Amazing. So a misleading headline/lede that will make people think they dodged a bullet. The lake will never be dry, as I suspect most would interpret from the story.

Still, it’s a real problem. I wonder how it will be resolved? Can they conserve enough at this date? And the drought extends through the whole ACF watershed, all the way to the Gulf (see the map with the original story).

links for 2007-10-16

toys, or one man’s trash

I picked up one of these today via FreeCycle, with 5 packs of film. As best I can tell the film is unusable. I took a few shots today and they’re really yellow and nasty looking.
Spectrase

The camera itself works fine. I’m fascinated by Polaroids. The technology in the film is one thing, but the cameras are always interesting. This one is one of the newer ones where the batteries are in the film pack, not the camera. So the battery is as fresh as the film. Neat idea. In this case, the batteries have outlasted the film.

And the focusing? Rather than some fancy phase-detection system, this thing uses a sonar to determine the distance to the subject. From there, I’m not sure what it does, but here’s how to get at it if you want to repurpose it. I don’t hear anything moving around, like a lens.

This would be quite useful for a lot of things, like repelling animals (varying the intensity of a water cannon based on the distance), parking vehicles in tight spaces, maybe put one on a commuter bike to flash a light when cars get too close.

I see 600-type cameras in thrift stores all the time: I may have to add one of those to the accumulation of cruft.

I wonder how you could make a home-brew instant image system? How would you record a latent image and how would you then make it visible? Hmmmm . . .