Nerds vs. Geeks

This is the first time I've seen someone back up my etimological argument that "nerds" were just the smart sub-set of "geeks" once upon a time. Then sometime, things flipped, and geek became the cool term. In a technologically savvy sense, of course... ;-)

The Alpha Geeks

Edward Lorenz - R.I.P.

Edward Lorenz Obituary

Lorenz was one of my scientific heroes. A meteorologist who discovered that small differences in initial conditions in non-linear systems may cause huge variations later. (a.k.a. the butterfly effect) In other words, how it is impossible to predict the weather far in advance without knowing everything that's happening everywhere to an infinite precision...

Told You So!!!

NYTimes: The Claim: Caffeine Causes Dehydration
by Anahad O'Connor

Drinking

In the end, I'm not sure exactly if the article had no point, or if I already had heard everything it said:
NYTimes: When People Drink Themselves Silly, and Why
By BENEDICT CAREY


I generally feel that drinking amplifies whatever mood that I'm in.

Dumb and Dumber: Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge?

Dumb and Dumber: Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge?
NYTimes

I would say no. The vast majority of people have always been ignorant of a great many things that the 'educated' classes take as common knowledge. It's just that nowadays, the 'masses' have a lot more access to platforms upon which to display their ignorance.

Ah....technology.

Tribalism

I'm writing this on a cold morning in Tennessee, where I'm attending a conference. It being a fall weekend, there's a lot of buzz about today's football game. The flags are out, the signs are up. Supporters of the visiting team have invaded the town - I know because of their sweatshirts and other clothing.

What is it about college sports, football in particular, that engenders such passion, especially among 'highly educated' graduates and faculty of colleges?

I'm sure that this isn't a new observation (I should peruse the sociology literature to see what's been done on this), but we identify with our colleges like people identify with tribes. The human instinct for competition makes us want to compete with a dominate other tribes. How do we do this? Since these particular tribes are more intelectual and social than warlike, we do it through our sports teams. What other way is there for my tribe (college) to compete with yours? It engenders pride at belonging to the victorious group. I think that's why sports such as football are so important to a college's psyche, and are so important for getting alumni to contribute money to the school. For those two reasons, we put up with the various other crap that comes along with fielding a football team.

Of course, there is the US News & World Report rankings, but we won't go there now.

Vista

Some initial thoughts on my 'upgrade' to Vista:

I now have 3gigs of RAM, but my damned video card is the slow link now. Never thought that would happen.

If you can, don't 'upgrade,' do a clean install. Mine failed both times I selected the upgrade option. After 2.5 hours of installation each time.

When it was finally done:

I guess that most of the improvements are under the hood, because there aren't really a lot of obvious changes. The look and feel is improved - I think this is where the need for the new graphics card comes in. Of course, they are once again copying the Mac OS here.

The sidebar is interesting, and long overdue. Again, a cue from Macs.

They've gone to putting all your personal files in a reasonably placed directory! C:\Users\Name
Wow! It's been since what, Windows 95 that I've been cursing the idiot who decided to hide the path to your personal files. In this regard, they're copying Unix.

I know that security is supposed to be better, but do I really have to go through two pop up confirmations each time I want to delete a file or access a control panel? I need to see if I can turn that off.

So in conclusion, yeah, it looks better, and probably works better, but most of the tangible improvements are just Microsoft catching up to Mac and Linux. But since I'm stuck with Windows, I'll take it.

The Terror

I must admit that my memory of the history of the French Revolution has gotten a bit vague. A lot of my specific memories of studies that I used to be able to call up instantly have gone that way. I shall indeed have to go back and refresh my memory - I had never made the link in my head between today and the Reign of Terror:

Bush's Dangerous Liaisons - NYTimes

I do though, have to wonder if the author made that title, or was it by an editor whose only knowledge of French history is the movie with John Malkovic? It makes no sense to me in the context of the article.

The origin of the word terrorist is indeed interesting...

Ah...(good) beer...

Nothing better than cask-conditioned ale!

“Bush lies” doesn’t cut it anymore.

Why does no one seem to care?

The "Good Germans" Among Us - Frank Rich, NYTimes

If you're surprised, you haven't been paying attention

I find it hard to believe that anyone is surprised by this. Maybe they're surprised that she actually came out and said it publicly, but everyone should know that this is what fundamentalists think of Jews...

Coulter: Christians as ‘Perfected Jews’ - NYTimes

Should I rejoice or weep?

After Years of Being Out, the Necktie Is In - NYTimes

Now I understand the airlines...

Just like the airlines, I try to pack as much into as little time as possible. They produce efficiency with their hub networks and their down to the minute scheduling. When it works, it's amazingly efficient. Of course the problem is, when one problem arises, it creates a series of cascading effects that propagates delays through the system.

Similarly, I try to pack so much into a day, that if one little thing goes wrong with the schedule...

Do you want half, or nothing?

It's the eternal risk/reward question: Do you go for the lesser prize which is the sure thing, or the ultimate prize which is a lot less certain? In this case, it seems a no brainer - the ultimate prize has no chance of happening:

Liberal Base Proves Trying to Democrats - NYTimes


An that brings up another topic - why is it so much easier for me to talk to people with whom I agree on nothing, than with people with whom I agree on much? I think it's because the people on "my" side, expect me to agree with them 100% of the time, which ain't going to happen, and the people on the "other" side know that we've got to talk about our disagreements civilly? I've given up talking to certain liberal friends of mine, because my nuanced disagreement on some issues infuriates them...

It's about time

I think about 8 years of an administration that lets the science go wherever it leads, be that in agreement with the politics or not, would be amazing. Maybe after that, subsequent administrations may find it more difficult to play fast and loose with the data. Pie in the sky? Maybe, but anything is better than the current situation.

The past eight years has just highlighted the fact that scientific freedom and objectivity is something that we scientists have taken or granted - something that I don't think we apppreciated nearly as much as we should have, until it was taken away.

If I can say one thing for the Bush administration, it's that they often did not even pretend to be evenhanded - and when things would blow up in their face, there was no way to deny what had been done. (Not that it stopped them.)

Protecting Science from the Government - NYTimes

Path not taken

Had I been born 20 years later, this is what I would have majored in:

Digital Forensics - NYTimes

New Highway typeface

Clearview Slideshow

A different view

Maybe this is how we should think about Iraq:

How a Revolution Saved an Empire

Damned mosquitos.

Another case of our not being able to accurately judge risk?

"To Spray or Not to Spray"
John Tierney's Blog - NYTimes

I'm going out to fog the backyard now, thank you...

What if we had a party, and no one came?

Large numbers of scientists (a small fraction of the world's population) will be waiting impatiently for the results when the new collider at Cern starts up. What they will see will be guaranteed to be incredible. Whatever comes out is going to set the direction for basic atomic research for the foreseeable future. I am not one who is confident of finding answers to 'life, the universe and everything,' though. My best guess is that the answers they find will spawn more questions at an even more fundamental level.

But what happens if there turns out to be nothing?

That would be, to me, by far the most interesting outcome. That would mean we've been thinking about these things in a completely wrong way for a very long time.

Of course, try and explain the excitement of a null result to a politician who has sunk millions into this....

New York Times:
A Giant Takes on Physics’ Biggest Questions