Spring flowers

Saw these Thursday morning on the way home from work. They hadn’t been there in the morning.

From my photo album; spring

Just one of the fringe benefits of cycling to work.

Posted by George on 03/20/10 at 04:50 PM
(0) Comments • Link

Attending a guest lecture on Atrazine
From my photo album; Notes

Thursday night MrsDoF and I attended a guest lecture by Dr. Tyrone Hayes, a biologist from UC Berkeley, on the biological effects of the herbicide atrazine on amphibians and mammals. Using concentrations of 0.1ppb (which are, to say the least, environmentally relevant), he showed how atrazine caused high incidence of intersexed frogs, and prostate and mammary cancer in humans.  He also found neural damage in salamanders and mice.  The effects propagated in different ways through three generations even if exposure was discontinued.

His research was originally funded by Syngenta, the Swiss manufacturer of atrazine.  But when he started getting results like that, they told him to take a hike and threatened to sue him.  He now has funding from other sources to continue his research.  Atrazine is banned in Europe (or as the company prefers to say; “denied regulatory approval”) but we spray 80 million pounds of it on crops here in the US.  The highest concentrations of it in rainwater, groundwater, and tap water are in Iowa, Illinois and Indiana.  So this is a topic of no small interest ‘round these parts.

Syngenta says atrazine has “been used safely for over 47 years” but they decline to define “safe”.  The Epa (which is currently renewing its examination of the chemical) allows 30 times more atrazine in your drinking water than the levels studied by Dr. Hayes.

All very interesting. And you might ask a woman who has just miscarried or who has breast cancer - or a man with prostate cancer, what “safe” means.  The company’s press releases sound, with minor changes in wording, like they are from a tobacco company years ago. 

But something else occurred to me…

MrsDoF works with autistic children on a regular basis.  Because of a perceived increase in the rate of autism, many people are frantic in search for a cause, and hopefully a cure.  A strong focus has been turned on vaccinations, even though that’s been studied to death by independent scientists and the link just isn’t there.  The science came out on the side of the big pharma companies that make the vaccinations (and aren’t getting rich from them).  Never mind, Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey know better.  You never hear them wondering if the real reason might be some ubiquitous environmental chemical like atrazine or bisphenol acetate (BPA).  Something with proven endocrine disruptive and neurological effects.  If there is an increase in autism, it might be worth studying.

Everyone carries cell phones and some people get brain cancer.  Epidemiological studies aren’t showing a link, and cell phone radiation is in the wrong part of the electromagnetic spectrum to cause cancer (a couple orders of magnitude too far down the scale, in fact, to damage DNA molecules).  But never mind, the Maine legislation knows better and voted to require warning labels on cell phones.  In this case the science comes out on the side of the cell phone companies, which needless to say, are appealing the decision.  Again, nobody on the panic-side of the equation seems to be asking about ubiquitous environmental chemicals.

Jumping to conclusions has a certain satisfying feel to it.  But it’s wrong and ends up hurting people.  It is the environmental equivalent of arresting the first suspect.  For reasons I can’t even fathom, politicians seem content to do this and then trumpet the conviction, even if it is based on little more than a corporate press release that this chemical or that practice is “safe”.  It’s better to look for independent science on the subject, which is to say; “not from the company’s labs”.  Science takes time, and the results are frustratingly couched in terms of probabilities, but it’s our best bet for regulatory insight.  If it’s certainty you want, go jump off a thousand-foot cliff.

NOTES:

  • The R. Omar and Evelyn Rilett Family Life Sciences lecture series is presented by the School of Biological Sciences at Illinois State University.
  • Dr. Hayes’ website is Atrazine Lovers.  I do wish he could afford to hire a webmaster.
  • EPA atrazine page
  • EPA announces renewal of atrazine examination
  • One of life’s little ironies: the company that makes Atrazine, and the company that makes the most common breast cancer chemotherapy drug, are divisions of the same parent company.      
  • Frogs are insectivores.  If we don’t have any more frogs (the spotted leopard frog is rare in Illinois now, used to be common) you have to wonder what bug’s life cycle is now unrestrained and what impact that will have on agriculture.  And for that matter, some “superweeds” are evolving resistance to atrazine, in some cases by gene-transfer from atrazine-resistant crops.  Which is to say; crops genetically engineered to allow higher levels of atrazine.      
  • By the way, atrazine plays hell with oceanic phytoplankton. 
Posted by George on 03/20/10 at 11:34 AM
(0) Comments • Link

Random acts of puzzlement
From my photo album; Notes

I pass this liquor store often on the way to McDonald’s.  It looks, shall we say… “weathered”, but the owner does something very interesting: he leaves small objects, sometimes of considerable value, on a shelf in the alley for random strangers to pick up.  Really unusual objects like a box of pliers or a small garden statue.  I asked him why but did not understand his explanation.

Weird, huh?  In a very cool way.

NOTES:

  • I’ll do a whole post on the comic linked above soon.  It really is profound.
  • My son says this pacifier was most likely dropped by someone transporting a baby, since rave culture is thin hereabouts. 
Posted by George on 03/19/10 at 06:46 PM
(0) Comments • Link

A wee touch of the Blarney… and some mind-blowing special effects

Forced perspective photography is pretty amazing stuff.  It is done by carefully positioning objects and point of view so that they appear much larger or smaller than normal.  Some forced perspective photos use intricately made props.  Hours can be spent in the preparation of a single photograph.  Just visit the link above to get a feel for it (“The checkerboard” and “My wife the elf” are my favorites), and then consider…

Walt Disney’s movie, Darby O’Gill & The Little People was a whole freaking movie made using forced perspective techniques.  Elevated walkways, giant props, enough lights to cause a blackout in Burbank, California, and intricate camera angles produced an amazingly detailed live-action movie without a single byte of computer code.

You can watch the whole movie on YouTube, apparently but rent the DVD if you can - it’s worth seeing in full quality and you can see the Special Features on how they did it.  The story in the movie is OK but the story of how Walt Disney made the movie is a technical odyssey.  How they got textures, color, lighting and focus to fit so seamlessly and believably is simply mind-blowing.  To say nothing of reproducing an Irish village on a sound stage.  (Take that, James Cameron!)

Posted by George on 03/17/10 at 09:54 PM
(5) Comments • Link

The X40 is dead; long live the X!

Well after some missteps in trying to acquire a new ThinkPad X200 (they quit making it while my order was pending, and I couldn’t establish complete Linux support for the X201s) I am now back in business with a ThinkPad X60.  It isn’t a new computer but functionally it’s just like my old X40 and I already knew it would run Linux without any surprises that would require expert assistance.

I tried one of them thar fancy laptops with all the doodads and whimmydiddles and whatnot, and it ran Linux real good but it was just too dadgum big and fragile. 

Many people would find a ThinkPad X to be too small but for some reason I find it easier to type on than a regular keyboard.  Maybe this is because lateral movement is painful for my hands, I don’t know.  The X keyboard is only 3% smaller than a regular one (though a very compact design) so you wouldn’t think it’d make that much difference.  I wore my old X40 to a frazzle; most o f the keys are shiny, there’s a noticeable dip worn into the spacebar, and the hard drive is going.

The Lenovo guy was a bit freaked out when I canceled the order.  He said; “I don’t understand, the 201 is virtually identical except for a faster processor.”  But I went to an Intel briefing: the i5 has a different internal architecture from the old Pentium dual-core, and it uses a tweakier front-end bus.  So maybe it would work, or maybe it needs work.  I’ll leave that up to the geniuses at Canonical and maybe get one a year from now when I can verify it.  Also I am not anxious to buy the first example of any production run, not even from Lenovo.

Meanwhile I’m trying to remember how the hell to set permissions on /var/www so I can work with the Apache installation.  Right now it’s root/root.  I added myself to the web-data group and would like to make that folder rwxrwxr_x with ownership by root/web-data.  But I’m rusty: anyone know if that’ll work?  Or what will?

NOTES:

  • I sold the ACER that I bought last November, to a whippersnapper who seems to enjoy all them doodads.
  • Picture not by me; I stole it from ThinkWiki.
Posted by George on 03/14/10 at 03:12 PM
(11) Comments • Link

It’s just one lousy hour, isn’t it?

It’s worse for some people than others.  Like the students at Normal Community High School, whose tardy bell is 7:20 am, thanks to a cost-saving measure enacted last summer by Unit 5 schools.  They thought moving the whole school system up an hour would straighten out their bus routes or something.  (It didn’t.)

Think about the high school kids you know.  Bright and chipper first thing in the morning?  Ready to learn, ready to take on the world?  Hey, here’s a great idea; let’s make them get up even earlier.

Last September-November, it was light when they dragged themselves to school.  Needless to say, “falling back” an hour last Fall was a welcome escape from this madness.  But as of tomorrow, they’re going to have to be in class an hour earlier, in the dark.

Unit 5 schools are going to be like a mausoleum tomorrow morning.

NOTES:

  • As a blogger, I am required to make fun of Daylight Savings Time twice a year.  But I don’t know if doing away with it would really be a good idea.  There really are a lot of different ways to look at the problem.
  • Yes, it’s called “Unit 5”.  Where they got the poetic inspiration for that school district name, I’ll never know.  At least the other one in our county is called “District 87”, which sounds a bit less like a sector in a Borg ship.
  • Wonder if there’s a “District 9” school district in the state?  That would be pretty cool.  Their football team could be called the “Prawns”...
Posted by George on 03/14/10 at 11:20 AM
(1) Comments • Link

Last little bit of winter

I’m not sorry to see winter go.  No sir, not at all.  This is the last little bit of snow next to my driveway as I left for work on Friday.  It was gone when I returned home.  Good riddance!  No mixed feelings for me.

From my photo album; winter

After the whole state was blanketed in pristine white, look at what a sad and dirty little remnant remains.  And it sure was fun riding in the snow.  Sometimes I’d cut right through snowdrifts with my bike.  It made a cool sound, like; “Booomff!” and snow flies everywhere.

Well this summer, I’ll work on my next winter bike, while I suffer through the heat.  I can always put on a jacket but not much I can do when it’s 90 out.

No, dammit!  Begone, Winter!  ‘Til next year.  Don’t stay away too long.

Posted by George on 03/13/10 at 10:23 PM
(1) Comments • Link

Tell me where I put the book tape

I have a roll of special tape that is used for repairing books.  It’s clear, acid-free, and certified by some librarian’s thingie.  Since it’s expensive, I don’t keep it with the regular packing tape (which looks like, and for all I know is, the same thing).  Instead, I thoughtfully put it some other place so it would still be there when I need to fix a book.

Except, I don’t remember where that other place is.  And after living in the same house for most of three decades, there’s a lot of stuff in my basement.  I have only three options for finding the book tape:

  1. Conduct a systematic search of the basement, room by room, looking for the book tape.  Of course, the odds of me finding it, let alone not getting distracted by some interesting thing along the way, are slim.
  2. Just forget about it.  The book tape will turn up eventually.  Of course, then I won’t be able to find the book I wanted to repair.
  3. Try to reconstruct my logic from when I thoughtfully came up with a good place to put the book tape. This can often be a frustrating exercise but once in a while actually succeeds.

Of course, that list omits the one, sure-fire strategy: go buy a new roll of book tape.  Odds are excellent that I’ll then find the missing roll (and misplace the new one).

Posted by George on 03/10/10 at 11:01 PM
(3) Comments • Link

In which, inspired by some damn TV show, I reveal something embarrassing about myself

House has had its ups and downs, but tonight’s brilliant episode was about a sick blogger, so I had to watch.  The patient was one of those bloggers who reveals everything about her life, both physical and emotional, and had readers all over the world.  So the House team was combing her blog for clues to her Unrealistic Medical Mystery Of The Week.

Much of the episode focused on the question; “What is an appropriate amount of self-disclosure?”  There are generational and cultural components to that question.  My dad revealed personal information in the smallest possible micro-droplets, after carefully considering ways of, um, not.  A story from his early teaching career illustrates.

He was filling in as a school principal in a small town in Colorado.  The townsfolk had kept their distance from him, not talking much or inviting him to any events, so he was lonely.  One day he was eating lunch alone in the diner and the sheriff came in and sat down with him.  The place was empty.  The sheriff began to ask him questions about the family of one of the kids in the school.  He basically told the sheriff to go ask them if he wanted to know anything.

He had been certain that nobody heard the conversation, but somebody must have gotten the gist of it because afterward, people began to be more friendly to him.  He got on well and made many friends there.

On the other extreme I’ve known people who tell me stuff about themselves that I’d rather not know.  Context is important: in a blog it’s fine, but I’ve had people corner me in a store aisle and loudly start telling me about their divorce or their kids’ drug problem while I edge away.  It isn’t that I don’t care, it’s just that I am slow-witted in those situations.  I usually stammer some kind of lame sympathy.  (I’m no good at talking on the phone, either.)

Back to the the TV episode; Doctor Chase is saddened by the discovery that, despite his accomplishments in life, women are mainly attracted to him because he’s so handsome.  In that context the suggestion is made that relationships online might be less affected by how someone looks and in that respect, be more “real”. 

But what to disclose online?  Doctor Wilson is mortified when it becomes public knowledge that that he once starred in a film that was later edited into a porno.  He sets out to embarrass House - an almost impossible task when it concerns a person who openly gambles and consorts with prostitutes.

What would embarrass me?  Hell, I’ve already admitted online that I voted twice for Ronald Reagan, so we know I’m not a quick study.  I’ve written that I only pretend to understand why people are offended by sarcasm.  I have never attempted to hide the fact that I just don’t understand sports or James Bond movies.  I did two detailed posts about gory details of my surgery last year.  My dad’s head would explode if he knew some of the stuff I’ve written in 8 years of blogging. 

But at least I’m not tortured by any thoughts that people only like me for my looks…  That one’s on doctor Chase.

Maybe the only embarrassing thing I can reveal online is that I suspect that I’m rather shallow.  You’d think that after failing at so many things I’d have something deeper to say about failure than; “Don’t despair, get up and try again.”  After the medical problems I’ve experienced I should be able to write something more reassuring than; “Don’t get too comfortable.  Comfort makes you more vulnerable to pain.”  After reading thousands of books and meeting so many brilliant, amazing people I should have learned something more profound than “Live by your values, not by your fears.”  Or not to suspect that possibly there isn’t anything more profound than that.

OK how’s this: I cried at the end of 50 First Dates.  Maybe it was Adam Sandler’s egg-shaped head.  Nah, everyone already knows I’m a sap.

Posted by George on 03/08/10 at 11:29 PM
(8) Comments • Link

Oh right, the Oscars…

The Oscars are on right now.  Like the State Of The Union address, I always just catch the summary the next day.  But if District 9 does not hop out of there on its weird insectoid legs with an armload of Oscars, I will once again be reminded that it’s all a sham. 

Since there’s nothing on television, I’m going out for peanut butter and crackers.

See also,

Posted by George on 03/07/10 at 08:49 PM
(6) Comments • Link

Unstoppable pedestrians

This winter the campus began putting plastic chains across non-essential stairways:

From my photo album, Notes

Left of the railing is where the stairs are.  To the right of the railing, is just snow-covered incline.

 

Posted by George on 03/02/10 at 11:11 PM
(0) Comments • Link

Toyota accelerators and a sense of proportion

Supposedly in the last ten years 56 people have perished in Toyota accelerator-related accidents, for which reason the company sent out 10 million recall notices.  We’ll come back to that number in a moment.  But if they’re found to have done something negligent, yeah; absolutely fine them, hold them to account.  Not because I think Toyota won’t fix the problems otherwise (Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda seems to have a pretty good grasp on the company’s long-term interests) but because it’s only fair to hold all car makers to the same standard.

Now about that number: 56 people, over the years.  Just for the hell of it, let’s double that number and compare it to Pinto deaths and SUV rollover deaths (to say nothing of people who died in regular cars struck by jacked-up SUV’s), or even the roughly 16,000 Americans who die every year from internal bleeding caused by NSAID pain relievers.  Or 18,000 annually from MRSA, which is directly attributable to overuse of antibiotics in medicine and especially in the livestock industry.  Or four hundred thousand deaths every year from smoking.

And we’re holding congressional hearings on Toyota accelerators?  I know this song: it’s “Let’s ding the foreign car maker!”  Except that the Toyota Camry is the “most American-made car”, so that doesn’t even make sense.

How about if we get a sense of proportion, then? Toyota accelerators should be an NTSA issue.  Instead let’s turn the cameras on Senators who don’t seem to care that 45,000 Americans die each year from lack of health insurance.  Let’s find out exactly why their elected representatives are so satisfied with the status quo.  Maybe their campaign financing would offer a clue.

NOTES:

Posted by George on 03/01/10 at 07:15 PM
(10) Comments • Link

Slavery, ongoing

Over the weekend MrsDoF and I went to see this year’s Oscar Shorts, a collection of short animated and live-action films.  One of the films was Kavi, about a young boy who is enslaved making bricks, and wishes he could go to school.  Here’s the trailer:

Kavi (www.KaviTheMovie.com) from Gregg Helvey on Vimeo.

Kavi and his family make bricks for a tyrannical owner who uses the pretext of intractable debt to enslave them all.  At the end of the movie, he makes a desperate gamble.  I wish they’d put the whole thing up on Vimeo or YouTube or something.

Posted by George on 03/01/10 at 06:05 AM
(0) Comments • Link

Alas, poor mouse, I knew him well…

I was cleaning up in the basement and found this 1992 Microsoft mouse, and before throwing it out decided some procrastination was in order.  So I photographed it in various stages of disassembly. 

From my photo album; Technology

I don’t know why, exactly, except that I always thought it was a clever mechanism.  And it’s interesting to contemplate the days when a computer mouse cost over a hundred dollars, and how they had to be taken apart occasionally to remove fibers from the optical encoding disks. 

Today we all use “optical” mice, but as far as I know the mouse has been an optical device since the first prototype in 1963.

It’s also neat to see the fine engineering that went into this device.  It had considerable heft - the ball was finely rubber-coated steel and its internal steel frame added weight as well.  The encoding disk was sharply cut on the emitter side but had angled ports on the sensor side to prevent internal reflections, resulting in a more defined signal.  And so on.  I uploaded 7 photos to the album, in case you are giving a lecture on technology history and need illustrations or something.  Or just want to make jokes about mouse balls.

I’m going to use the microswitches in my next little project, which is to convert a Nintendo Wii-shaped candy dispenser into a 5mw green laser pointer.  A little piece of the past living on in a toy.

OK back to cleaning up the basement now.

Posted by George on 02/28/10 at 04:50 PM
(4) Comments • Link

Science is culture, autotuned

Feynman: “I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things.  I think it’s much more interesting.”

I’m flattened by the irony of Templeton Foundation types who say; “Well science doesn’t know everything”.  That’s exactly the point.  In science we can pursue the unknown instead of making up mythological answers about it.  We’re allowed, encouraged to disprove anything in science, if we can; each instance a course-correction toward better understanding the universe.

Posted by George on 02/27/10 at 10:57 AM
(3) Comments • Link
Page 1 of 117 pages  1 2 3 >  Last »