Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Air quality

Great.  Pittsburgh is the worst city for short term particle pollution.  And second worst (behind Bakersfield) for worst long term particle pollution.

A lot of Americans feel comfortable about air pollution, and we often think that it's a problem in a few well-known places, said Dr. Norman H. Edelman, chief medical officer for the American Lung Association....
Pittsburgh topped the list of cities most polluted by short-term exposure to particles. It's still a dangerous city for particulate pollution, pointed out Edelman.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

LaTex?


\int_{0}^{1}\frac{x^{4}\left(1-x\right)^{4}}{1+x^{2}}dx

=\frac{22}{7}-\pi

LaTeX Error Message Fail

Friday, April 24, 2009

Larry Morris


I was in Alexandria, VA last weekend and visited the Torpedo Factory Art Center.  It's a bunch of small art studios where artists work and sell their wares.  It is a nice place to visit!  I loved the work of Larry Morris.  He makes wonderful sculptures depicting the lives of these tetrahedral people, something like a comic in three dimensions.  There is something poignant and touching about them. 

Monday, April 20, 2009

Gay marriage

Another good opinion piece.

Pot vs. alcohol

I'm not sure what to think of the narcotic legalization debate.  It seems totally obvious that our black market is fundamentally fueling the world narcotics trade, replete with gang and militia violence.  On the other hand, it is hard for me to imagine walking into a bar and seeing people snorting cocaine.  I see no problem with marijuana though.  I found it a little discomforting to see hoards of stoned people in the coffee shops of Amsterdam, but it is no more disconcerting than seeing a group of drunks at a frat party.  Eventually, I suppose drugs should be totally legalized.  Perhaps this can occur when old fogies like me either pass on or get over our prejudice.  Allowing people in the US to voluntarily destroy their lives with drugs seems more acceptable in the big scheme of things than permitting poor neighborhoods all over the world, including the US, to be run by thugs with guns.  

A simple but convincing line on this debate is from the Huffington post, via a NY Times blog.



  •  Huffington Post: Norm Stamper, a retired police chief and member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, reviews the pot vs. booze debate on 4/20 day:



  • Over the past four years I’ve asked police officers throughout the U.S. (and in Canada) two questions. When’s the last time you had to fight someone under the influence of marijuana? (I’m talking marijuana only, not pot plus a six-pack or a fifth of tequila.) My colleagues pause, they reflect. Their eyes widen as they realize that in their five or fifteen or thirty years on the job they have never had to fight a marijuana user. I then ask: When’s the last time you had to fight a drunk? They look at their watches.

    Saturday, April 18, 2009

    Dog Bloat

    I'm staying with a friend who has a pitt bull.  I was told not to wrestle with it after it eats, because of dog bloat.  The stomach of some kinds of dogs (deep-chested) can actually be twisted and turned around, causing all manner of harmful effects.  I was very skeptical until I read about it myself.  It's apparently the second leading killer of dogs after cancer.  I had a german shepherd for a few years growing up (another deep-chested dog) and had no idea about this.  It seems like it should be better known.  It actually killed one of my host's dogs a few years ago.  The scariest part is that they can die within an hour.

    Tuesday, April 14, 2009

    ghci maximum input length

    Annoying.  GHCI, the GHC Haskell comiler top level loop, will only allow a fixed number of characters on an input line.  If you copy a long list, say from Mathematica, to the command line, it will give a syntax error.

    Monday, April 13, 2009

    Google Immigration

    Good article about high-skilled immigration. 

    Sunday, April 12, 2009

    Iowa

    is historically progressive!

    Serial comma

    Do you put a comma after 'and'?  Do I like apples, oranges, and pears, or apples, oranges and pears?  The comma appearing before the and has its own name, a serial comma.  The upshot is that in American English you normally use it, and otherwise you generally don't.  Here's a funny example of a case to use it in any language:

    Use of the serial comma can sometimes remove ambiguity. Consider the possibly apocryphal book dedication quoted by Teresa Nielsen Hayden:
    To my parents, Ayn Rand and God.

    Pebble Mine

    I saw the short film Red Gold at this year's Banff Mountain Film Festival.  One of the environmental films was about the Pebble Mine in Alaska.  The short story is that there was recently an enormous amount of copper and gold found very near to Bristol Bay, the most important salmon waters in the world.  Now there is a battle between the mining company that owns the rights, and environmentalists and residents that don't want to see the rivers and salmon runs ruined by mine pollution.  A Men's Journal article gives a good summary.  One of the comments to the article was particularly poignant.

    The problem I see as I visit each summer is that while people like us debate this issue and hope the mining project will not occur, the reality is that every day in this area there are helicopters in the air, and people and equipment on the ground moving forward with the implementation of infrastructure needed for this mine to be created. In other words, we’re talking while they’re working.
    With the horrible track record of open pit mines, I have little doubt that the salmon would be greatly deminished by the pollution.  With hundreds of billions of dollars at stake though, and Alaskans  seeming to care less for their environment than economic development, as seen by the rejected ballot measure in August that sought to protect the area, I fear and suspect the worst.

    Tuesday, April 07, 2009

    MRI

    I got an MRI today because I am participating in a study at UPMC.  It's an enormous machine with a human-size cylinder cut out of the middle.  That's where they slide you in to take pictures of your brain.  I was given simple tasks like matching faces and patterns.  You communicate with the computer using a keypad that is placed in a glove on your hand.  Besides being very noisy, the only thing that bothered me is that during one of the experiments, the magnetic field somehow started stimulating the muscles around my torso.  They started twitching randomly.  It wasn't big, just subtle involuntary movement of the muscles, but it felt really strange.
      One of the tasks was to look at disturbing or upsetting pictures, such as people who had been in accidents, and to try to consciously cast the scenario in a positive light.  For instance, if the picture was of someone who was clearly injured, but was being treated in a hospital, you were instructed to invent some story like, "Well, the person is hurt, but is being well cared for and will be better soon."  I suspect they're testing the effect of "positive thinking" on brain function.  Anyway, it was an interesting experience. 

    Monday, April 06, 2009

    Hilarious

    http://failblog.org/

    Deadlines

    I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.  --Douglas Adams

    Sunday, April 05, 2009

    Hidden Qatar

    Now I don't feel so bad about not getting a feel for the country.  Seems like a challenge even for a BBC reporter.

    Saturday, April 04, 2009

    Light shines in Iowa

    Gay marriage ban is lifted by the state supreme court.  Midwest to California: "Grow up."

    Friday, April 03, 2009

    Balloon attacks?

    I'm reading Into Thin Air.  The author keeps talking about the Jet stream.  I realized I didn't know what it is, so I looked it up on Wikipedia.  Basically it's just fast air currents at a certain position in the atmosphere, at the coldest point.  The wind is so fast, jets that fly in the stream can shave 1/3 off their time flying between Tokyo and LA.  The weirdest thing though, is that the Japanese used balloons filled with explosives, positioned in the jet stream, to bomb America during WWII.  Weird...  The article claims there may be some unexploded balloons in the forests of the West coast somewhere.  

    Thursday, April 02, 2009

    Opinions

    from Doron Zeilberger.  I especially like #3 and #96, of the few I had time to read.