Monthly Archives: May 2009

Littering … and Creating a Nuisance

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On July 11, 1979, the space station Skylab re-entered the atmosphere, broke up and rained down over Western Australia and the Indian Ocean. (Ah, yes, I remember going to a Skylab-is-falling party) The Shire of Esperance fined NASA $400 for littering.

Littering fine paid

ALMOST 30 years after fining NASA for littering the local area with debris from abandoned space station Skylab, the Shire of Esperance has received a $US400 cheque. American radio station Highway Radio paid the fine on NASA’s behalf, raising the funds on variety breakfast program Barker and Barley in the Morning.

Visualize This

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A chess simulation, which shows you the moves that the computer is contemplating.

An easy way to evaluate the game in a given moment is by calculating the total value of all the pieces left on the board. These values vary with position, but in the most basic calculations a pawn is given one point, bishops and knights three points each, rooks five points and queens nine points. The points change depending of the position of a particular piece and how the pieces are coordinated. This means that an advanced pawn is worth more than one that’s still in the starting square and that a cornered bishop is worth less than out in the open. The importance of position is something chess has in common with both backgammon and most games for poker. Another similarity is the importance of thinking ahead.

Braaiiins

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Darpa: Heat + Energy = Brains. Now Make Us Some.

The idea behind Darpa’s latest venture, called “Physical Intelligence” (PI) is to prove, mathematically, that the human mind is nothing more than parts and energy. In other words, all brain activities — reasoning, emoting, processing sights and smells — derive from physical mechanisms at work, acting according to the principles of “thermodynamics in open systems.” Thermodynamics is founded on the conversion of energy into work and heat within a system (which could be anything from a test-tube solution to a planet). The processes can be summed up in formalized equations and laws, which are then used to describe how systems react to changes in their surroundings.

Prime Surprise

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New Pattern Found in Prime Numbers

Since the late ‘70s, researchers have known that prime numbers themselves, when taken in very large data sets, are not distributed according to Benford’s law. Instead, the first digit distribution of primes seems to be approximately uniform. However, as Luque and Lacasa point out, smaller data sets (intervals) of primes exhibit a clear bias in first digit distribution. The researchers noticed another pattern: the larger the data set of primes they analyzed, the more closely the first digit distribution approached uniformity. In light of this, the researchers wondered if there existed any pattern underlying the trend toward uniformity as the prime interval increases to infinity

I linked to a video about Benford’s law a while back.

The Mob Can Now Go Green

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Making the greenhouse gas sleep with the fishes

The Holy Grail: Carbon-Capturing Cement

The Novacem process has two main benefits; creating magnesium oxide doesn’t release CO2, and turning it into cement requires less than half the energy required to create traditional Portland cement. Even better, when the cement hardens, it absorbs 1.1 metric tons of carbon dioxide, which means that the technique actually removes more than 0.7 metric tons of CO2 for every ton of cement produced. That offers enormous carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) potential.

They're so Yummy and Tender

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Mmmmm. Free-range kids. Salon.com: Stop worrying about your children!

Basically, being exposed to all of the worst-case scenarios on TV has coupled with our poor ability to assess risk of unlikely events, results in parents being way too overprotective. I see kids getting driven to and from things I would have walked/biked to (and had I asked to be “chauffeured” I would have gotten a scowl that would have disfigured me for life), and parents wait with/for their kids at the bus stop. Perhaps there’s a socializing aspect to that, but if it’s for safety it’s probably unwarranted.

Everything that we do has a product that we can buy that’s supposed to make our kids safer, as if they’re born without the requisite accoutrements. Then there is something we can do as parents to be more careful, to be more protective. The assumption behind all of that is that if you are a good parent, you should be protecting your child from 100 percent of anything that could possibly go wrong, and if not, you will be blamed and Larry King will shake his finger at you.

I also like the point about how kids used to become “adults” at around age 12 or so, rather than being sheltered from life, and how constant supervision is smothering.

The fun of childhood is not holding your mom’s hand. The fun of childhood is when you don’t have to hold your mom’s hand, when you’ve done something that you can feel proud of. To take all those possibilities away from our kids seems like saying: “I’m giving you the greatest gift of all, I’m giving you safety. Oh, and by the way I’m taking away your childhood and any sense of self-confidence or pride. I hope you don’t mind.”

Is it Illegitimate Journalism?

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The Daily Show as Legitimate Journalism

Jon Stewart makes no pretense that he’s all about the entertainment, but I think the article is right — he does ask the tough questions when the time comes and shows good insight into issues.

The venerable Sunday morning news shows, oftentimes featuring some of the most reputable people in journalism, largely go through a formulaic process, repeated weekly with their guests. The crack team of researchers will provide a number of quotes made by said interviewee appearing to contradict each other that the guest will then evade and stonewall against by jumping through any number of grammatical, contextual, semantic, and logical hoops. While The Daily Show has a more varied roster of guests from week to week, the Sunday morning talk shows routinely have decision makers and opinion leaders on to explain themselves. Put it this way; who would you rather have interview David Addington, Alberto Gonzalez, Donald Rumsfeld, or Dick Cheney? I would feel much more confident that an interview with Stewart would reveal more of a subject than an interview with any of the Sunday morning hosts. If British talk show host David Frost can cement the legacy of a disgraced U.S. president, then certainly Jon Stewart would be able to shed light on some of our more pressing national issues.

I’m guessing that some of the people mentioned would rather only be interviewed by someone who was tossing slow pitches over the fat part of the plate