Category Archives: Misc

Earthquaaaake!

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We were hit with an earthquake (earlier today as I write this, yesterday as this is posted); preliminary reports had it at a 5.8 with the epicenter about 85 miles away from DC. I was at work and it took a second to realize it wasn’t someone rolling a heavy cart down the hallway. I was all “What the?” (as I moved to stand in the doorframe of my office) because earthquakes aren’t all that common in this area. But I’ve been through the experience a few times before.

I came home to find that entropy had increased in my abode from the shakin’ and bakin’. Most of the top row of CDs (Beatles through Dire Straits) had fallen, and many things on another set of shelves had tipped over or made it to the ground.

Also check out Virginia earthquake waves ripple across the US! from the Bad Astronomer

Looks like I will be busy fulfilling my duties as a member of an American chapter of the Society for Putting Things on Top of Other Things

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Some Esplainin'

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“Lucy” look-alikes honour Lucille Ball’s 100th birthday

Sporting upswept hairdos and blue and white polka dot dresses, the crowd of 915 Lucy Ricardos set to establish the first Guinness world record in her honour. It was all part of the annual Lucy Fest in Jamestown, which drew fans from as far away as Australia to the normally sleepy town of 30,000 people in upstate New York.

My folks grew up near Jamestown and I’ve got plenty of relatives in the area. I’ve gone there for numerous family reunions/vacation but skipped this year; the nieces have outgrown the charm of a sleepy town and even sleepier smaller towns around the lake. Reunion is in July so we miss Lucy-fest anyway. Not sure I’d want to cope with that.

But the kicker here is “upstate New York.” “Upstate” as used by many is not a geographical term. It means “not in NY City.” Otherwise you might think of “upstate” as being up — or north— of NY city. And some distance north, too, so it’s not “just outside of the city.” Like the capitol district, Albany/Schenectady/Troy, and points north. You can include areas to the west, like Utica and Syracuse. But Jamestown? It’s at the south end of Lake Chautauqua, southwest of Buffalo and just east of Erie, PA (about about a 45-minute drive) and not even a half-hour drive into Pennsylvania when going south. You’ve really conveyed no information by geographically dividing the state into “the city” and the other 99% of the area that comprises it.

"Hi, I'm Randall, and I'm a MAN."

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If you have yet to run across posts on elevatorgate/rebeccapocalypse (over 9,000 Google hits on the former term) then you probably don’t read many science/skeptic blogs. If you have and are sick of it, don’t worry, because I’m not going to add my quanta of coinage. I have come to loathe participating in internet discussions of this ilk — despite the community supposedly being held among the science/skeptic minded, they have a tendency to stray from rationality and civility far too quickly and too much in magnitude for my taste. In many cases, if you don’t present the right answer™ as determined by the owner of the dais, you are quickly dogpiled into oblivion, and that can extend to any kind of criticism. Point out someone has misquoted Evil Protagonist (or note that EP was actually correct in some statement) and all of the sudden you are a staunch supporter of Evil Protagonist in the eyes of some (many?) participants.

However, in case you want more of the same or are otherwise interested in a somewhat related topic, here is a post by xkcd’s Randall Monroe on Google+’s insistence on publicly disclosing your gender, which does not seem to have descended into the usual quagmire, though it does include the predictable “it doesn’t bother me so it shouldn’t bother anybody” responses.

The bottom line is that there are a lot of reasons Google+ would want to ask about your gender. But there’s no good reason to pointedly make it the only thing in your profile that can’t be private—and many reasons not to, starting with basic courtesy. It may be a small issue in the grand scheme of things, but I think it’s worth getting right.

It’s a Computer, so it Must be Right. Right?

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The best intro book for any topic

Of course I checked out physics and in addition to Larry Gonick’s The Cartoon Guide to Physics, it gave a bunch of books on various topics within physics. I have read none of these books, so I have no basis for endorsing or disputing the choices; I don’t know if “Best Intro” means they were going for pop-sci books for a general audience or intro textbooks for the student or serious amateur. The Cartoon Guide might indicate one way — I’m not sure — but the other titles are or seem more like textbooks. The closest I can come to a recommendation is noting that the QM book is by David J Griffiths, I’ve heard good things about it, and his Electrodynamics textbook is very good.

It's Official: Corvallis the Most Boring City in America

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Where to Live to Avoid a Natural Disaster

Corvallis, OR is the metro area with the lowest risk of natural disasters in the US.

Small quake and drought risk; little extreme weather.

In the six years I lived there we did have a drought and an earthquake (Magnitude 5.6, ~ 30 miles away), so it was more exciting/dangerous when I was there. Lots of cities in the northwest rated as low-risk.