Religious analogy

http://spectator.org/archives/2013/07/02/stranger-in-a-mormon-land

My visit to the Mormon ward was far removed from all of those experiences.

The closest analogy might be something along these lines: Imagine that you are an observant Jew attending a Christian church for the first time. There are many things that you will recognize, including concepts and even scriptures, but they will be recast in a way that is weird, in fact, utterly foreign to you.

Sure, members of this relatively new faith will use the same Hebrew Bible, but they will call it something different, the "Old Testament," which hints at a divide. They also use other authoritative books, and their method of interpretation has little to nothing to do with your own tradition. They have transformed the Passover meal into something barely recognizable to you. They profess faith in a messiah, but their idea of him is different from your own hopeful notion of the savior of the Jewish people and the world. They affirm the truth of your religion to a point, but insist on a newer, fuller revelation from God that has superseded yours, and invite you to join them in this final dispensation.

My visit to the Mormon ward was a bit like that...

--
Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.
Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.
Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.
Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.
Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honor more.

Bunny inspectors redux

[Cc B. and K.]

D.,

This may amuse you if you're in the right humor. USDA regulations now say magicians' rabbits need full-scale disaster plan. Death by paperwork.

-M.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jul/1/agriculture-department-tells-magician-write-disast/

"My USDA rabbit license requirement has taken another ridiculous twist," he continued. "I just received an 8 page letter from the USDA, telling me that by July 29 I need to have in place a written disaster plan, detailing all the steps I would take to help get my rabbit through a disaster, such as a tornado, fire, flood, etc. They not only want to know how I will protect my rabbit during a disaster, but also what I will do after the disaster, to make sure my rabbit gets cared for properly. I am not kidding–before the end of July I need to have this written rabbit disaster plan in place, or I am breaking the law."

Mr. Hahne also detailed the guidelines the USDA reportedly gave him:

• The new regulation became effective Jan. 30, 2012.

• The written plan must be completed by July 29, 2013.

• Mr. Hahne and his wife, Brenda, must be trained to implement the plan as written.

• The written plan must be available for review by USDA inspectors by Sept. 28, 2013.

--

Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.

Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.

Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.

Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.

Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honor more.

Intelligence and agency

[Note: I could be wrong about everything. I frequently am. I do however find my own insights convincing or I wouldn't bother to share them. ]

Dear Sister G.,

"Intelligence." "Agent." These words are used in the scriptures. I think they are well-chosen. Obviously the gospel concept predates the word choice--the gospel was true before English was invented--but I think Joseph Smith did an even better job than he probably knew, translating them into English.

The scriptures say that men are "agents unto themselves," and the JST of Moses 7:13 says, "in the garden of Eden, man had agency." The word "agent" comes from Latin "agere" (ago/agere/egi/actus). Textbooks often give the meaning as "to do, to act, to make, etc." but what it really is is a generic verb which gets its specific meaning from the associated noun, just like the English word "do." (Consider the difference between "I did my taxes", "I did the dishes", "I did my duty", and "I did him in".) Basically it means "to whatchamacallit." In English, "agent" can refer to something which catalyzes or acts (as in chemistry, or expressions like "agent of change"), or to someone who acts ON ANOTHER'S BEHALF. When the scriptures say then that men are "agents unto themselves," I feel like the Lord intends for us to see 1.) we have the power to act, to do, to make, etc., 2.) when we do so, we represent ourselves--but we also have the choice to become HIS agents, to act at his direction and on his behalf. It's a good, subtle choice of word and I love it.

The scriptures also talk about "intelligence," especially in D&C 93 (which refers to "intelligence" as a singular undifferentiated "mass noun" like "information", without discrete subsets) and in Abraham 3 (which refers to "intelligences" as a synonym for premortal spirits). The word "intelligence" comes from Latin "intellegere" (intellego/intellegere/intellegi/intellectus), which textbooks say means "to understand." It comes from "legere" (lego/legere/legi/lectus) which means "to read". "Inter" (between) + "legere" (to read) = "to read between [the lines]", "to understand". But here's the neat thing: I learned a few years back that the original meaning of "legere" was actually "to choose." Because reading consisted of picking the right meaning out of a set of letters, "legere" also came to mean "to read" as well as "to choose". So "intellegere" not only means "to read between", it must also mean "to choose between". That makes "intelligence" an extremely appropriate word for the scriptural concept of that which not only sees and understands, but also chooses a course of action.

We are intelligence, endowed with agency.

Love,

Max

P.S. Moses 7:13 originally said, "the Lord said unto Enoch, behold, these thy brethren, they are the workmanship of mine own hands, & I gave unto them their knowledge in the day that I created them & in the Garden of Eden gave I unto man his agency;". During revisions by the Prophet, the word "knowledge" was crossed out and replaced by "intelligence", the phrase "in the day that I created them" was crossed out, "gave I unto" was crossed out, and "his" was partially crossed out and rewritten as "has". "I gave unto them their knowledge & in the Garden of Eden man had agency;"

I mention this both because it's interesting doctrinally and because it says something interesting about the process by which revelation comes: line upon line, precept upon precept.

-- 

Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.

Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.

Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.

Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.

Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honor more.

Textbook awesome

Dear B.,

Today I read a truly awesome sentence in a genetics textbook.

I don't know how much you remember about cellular meiosis, but to refresh your memory: in cellular mitosis, a cell splits into two cells, each with its same chromosome count. In meiosis, a cell splits into four cells, each of which has the normal chromosome count, so that it can be combined with another cell during fertilization to produce a new organism. The reason this works is that before mitosis or meiosis, each chromosome builds up an extra chromotid--a copy of itself, still attached to the original chromosome through a centromere--which splits during meiosis to produce two chromosomes.

The splitting takes place in two phases. In the first part, the two versions of each chromosome (e.g. the X chromosome you got from your mom and the one you got from your dad) pair up into what are called "bivalents": like two little X's attached to each other. Then one chromotid of each swaps parts of itself with a chromotid from the other, so you wind up with four chromatids (one identical to the mother's, one identical to the father's, and two that are part of each). Then the cell splits, and one chromosome goes to each new cell. In the second phase, the chromosome itself splits the chromatids apart, and the cell splits again, with each cell getting one chromatid. (This second part is just like mitosis, only the cell already only has half the right number of chromosomes.)

Okay, so the awesome sentence went something like this: "During zygotene [a subphase of meiosis], each chromosome somehow seeks out its homologous pairing in order to recombine." Key word there: "somehow." The textbook went on to acknowledge that the mechanism is not well-understood. It's kind of mind-boggling when you think about it: if a chromosome is just a string of genes, how does your chromosome #11 from your mom know that it's chromosome #11 and is supposed to pair up with your other chromosome #11 from your dad? Rather, the chromosome itself MUST have some extra information that says, "Hey, I'm a #11" The reason I think this is awesome is that here is a fascinating scientific question that most textbooks would probably just gloss over because the answer isn't known, but THIS textbook specifically calls out the fact that the answer isn't known--and questions are the essence of science. Knowing how to ask questions, and what to do to find real answers, and tell them from false answers.

I wish this kind of thing were more common. I wish the average 10th-grade high school student finished the school year knowing more than just a bunch of facts and accepted theories about biology--I want them to know what we don't know as well. Do we know where new phenotypes originate? (If a giraffe evolves a longer neck, where did the gene for longer necks come from in the first place?) That evolutionary theory of punctuated equilibrium that you just taught us--do we know if it's true based on paleontological evidence, or is it just a theory still looking for evidence? Do we really understand how neurons pass information to each other? How do homologous chromosomes find each other? (Maybe there are answers to some of these questions. It's hard for me to tell the difference between 'the details are so complicated that I just won't mention them here' and 'nobody knows how it works but I don't want to admit that in a textbook.' It seems like you need a lot of expertise in a subject to be able to confidently assess which questions are unsolved--you can't easily learn this on your own even with the Internet, which is another reason it should be in textbooks.)

"Somehow." This is my new favorite science word.

Love,

Max

-- 

Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.

Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.

Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.

Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.

Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honor more.

Hydrogen generation

Replacement for platinum in electrophoresis?

http://science.psu.edu/news-and-events/2013-news/Schaak6-2013

--

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honor more.

'If you do not accuse each other, God will not accuse you. If you have no accuser you will enter heaven, and if you will follow the revelations and instructions which God gives you through me, I will take you into heaven as my back load. If you will not accuse me, I will not accuse you.'

Conquest of Elysium Damage Calculator

Conquest of Elysium Damage Calculator

Base Damage:

Bonus

Enemy armor total:

Answer

*** Formula:
Open-ended average of 1-N = N/(N-1)+N/2
[derived by summing infinite series of open-ended rolls plus the average damage of the final non-open-ended roll].
Including armor A where A < N, this produces a weighted average damage = ((1+(N/2)+(N-A-1))*(1/N) + (N-A)*(N-A-1)/(2*N)

Global warming: poll

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2013/02/13/peer-reviewed-survey-finds-majority-of-scientists-skeptical-of-global-warming-crisis/

According to the newly published survey of geoscientists and engineers, merely 36 percent of respondents fit the "Comply with Kyoto" model. The scientists in this group "express the strong belief that climate change is happening, that it is not a normal cycle of nature, and humans are the main or central cause."

The authors of the survey report, however, note that the overwhelming majority of scientists fall within four other models, each of which is skeptical of alarmist global warming claims.

The survey finds that 24 percent of the scientist respondents fit the "Nature Is Overwhelming" model. "In their diagnostic framing, they believe that changes to the climate are natural, normal cycles of the Earth." Moreover, "they strongly disagree that climate change poses any significant public risk and see no impact on their personal lives."

Another group of scientists fit the "Fatalists" model. These scientists, comprising 17 percent of the respondents, "diagnose climate change as both human- and naturally caused. 'Fatalists' consider climate change to be a smaller public risk with little impact on their personal life. They are skeptical that the scientific debate is settled regarding the IPCC modeling." These scientists are likely to ask, "How can anyone take action if research is biased?"

The next largest group of scientists, comprising 10 percent of respondents, fit the "Economic Responsibility" model. These scientists "diagnose climate change as being natural or human caused. More than any other group, they underscore that the 'real' cause of climate change is unknown as nature is forever changing and uncontrollable. Similar to the 'nature is overwhelming' adherents, they disagree that climate change poses any significant public risk and see no impact on their personal life. They are also less likely to believe that the scientific debate is settled and that the IPCC modeling is accurate. In their prognostic framing, they point to the harm the Kyoto Protocol and all regulation will do to the economy."

The final group of scientists, comprising 5 percent of the respondents, fit the "Regulation Activists" model. These scientists "diagnose climate change as being both human- and naturally caused, posing a moderate public risk, with only slight impact on their personal life." Moreover, "They are also skeptical with regard to the scientific debate being settled and are the most indecisive whether IPCC modeling is accurate."

--

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honor more.

'If you do not accuse each other, God will not accuse you. If you have no accuser you will enter heaven, and if you will follow the revelations and instructions which God gives you through me, I will take you into heaven as my back load. If you will not accuse me, I will not accuse you.'

Prison

Henry Harpending on prison:

[from the comments here: http://westhunt.wordpress.com/2013/04/14/castaways/]

I encountered a fellow years ago who had encountered several unwilling castaways and contributed to the failure of their 'attempt'. He was an old guy in NE Botswana, roughly between Nata and Pandamatenga if you have a map handy.

He told me about the best years of his life when the government has housed him, fed him, given him clothes and medical care, and not worked him very hard. I asked him how that happened, and he was a little bit vague. He was hoping it might happen again.

I turned out that when he was a young man their hunting party watched a small airplane with engine failure land on a pan (like a dry lakebed). Two white men came out, looked around, saw the hunting party, and waved at them. The Bushmen did not know what these creatures could be, so in the interest of caution and safety they killed them. Soon after the government took him away to prison.

He did understand that he had been in prison but he had no clear idea why. What had he done wrong?


--
Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.
    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honor more.

Good article

Biography of Len Hope about his conversion to the gospel in the early 20th century. Real nice flavor to it.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/welcometable/2013/04/len-hope-in-his-own-words/

Brothers and sisters, I wish to state why I become a Latter-day Saint. I once belonged to the Baptist Church. Before I become a Baptist, I thought it was wise to ask some of the old members that have been members of the church for a long time, how do you get religion and what was it.

Some of 'em stated to me that when you get religion, you have to pray for it. You have to see peculiar things, and have peculiar dreams, and see yourself crossing Hell on a spider web. I thought that was very peculiar, but I was willing to try it. So I tried to get religion that year, and I prayed for it, and seek very hard for religion, the way I know — beggin' the Lord for religion, but I couldn't get religion that year.

I couldn't see myself crossing Hell on a spider web, nor neither could I see any peculiar things. Next year, I try religion again. And, as you know it's customary for those in the Baptist or Methodist denomination how they gather, the people down on them benches, called mournin' benches. You set down and pray, and they'll pray for it, and after that period, why they give us a prayer period, a rest period, to go out and pray for our sins. And they let us go out for an hour or two hours, prayin' for our sins. So I went out late at night and went up and lay down in a cotton patches and cornfield, lookin up to Heaven, begging the Lord for religion, dew falling on me heavily. Well after it was impossible for me to see any of these peculiar things, it looked like there was no religion for me. So I went back to the Church and promised to live all the laws of the Baptist Church, keep all the commandments of Jesus Christ as far as I could understand it. I give the preacher my hand, and with covenant. So when the vows was over, they baptize us, and shortly after that the Lord showed me in a dream, that I had to be baptized over again. I wasn't in the right Church; it wasn't happening. [snip]

-Max

--
Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.
    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honor more.

Math is a sixth sense

[quoting http://westhunt.wordpress.com/2013/04/09/math-is-hard/]

Lord Kelvin said "I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be."  Even those who didn't have much math sometimes wished that they did.  Chuck Darwin said "I have deeply regretted that I did not proceed far enough at least to understand something of the great leading principles of mathematics;  for men thus endowed seem to have an extra sense."

I remember talking to a field biologist studying three genetic male morphs of some screwy freshwater fish.  In passing, I said " Of course all three forms have to have the same average fitness, over the long term."  He said " Why?", because he was an idiot. Speaking of which – general intelligence and math ability are fairly well correlated.  Maybe a lot of these low-math types just aren't very smart.

--

Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.

    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honor more.

Thella's obituary

My great-aunt died recently. She spent twenty years as an informant for the FBI.

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/thespectrum/obituary.aspx?n=thella-brock&pid=164179844&fhid=4515#fbLoggedOut

-Max

--

Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.

    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honor more.

Medicine: 1960s to now

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324789504578380382204116270.html

By current standards, the lack of third-party coverage would be impermissible. But treating patients without insurance meant that I had to give my acute attention to the price of every medical intervention. The costs could have a direct and painful impact on a family's budget. So I had to know the prices for most of the medications I prescribed and of most of the tests I might order. I learned to play for time by waiting, when it was safe to, before ordering an X-ray or a test—and to substitute less-expensive medications for more costly ones wherever possible.

I developed pastimes that were diverting but would permit me to be available to patients 24-7, requiring coverage by a substitute only for a two-week vacation annually. Few physicians nowadays would undertake such an onerous schedule, and yet many of the inconveniences are offset by benefits. If you are caring for your own patients, you know them and their ailments and can manage a great deal over the telephone (or by email these days), with minimal cost to them and minimal intrusion into your own life. By contrast, covering for another physician almost invariably means inefficiency—additional time to learn the patients' relevant history, and often either a direct patient encounter or an outpatient facility visit, all of which greatly add to the cost.

Then, in the mid-1970s, things changed, and we became enlightened. Third parties, typically the insurance companies, were interpolated between the physician and the patient. Some of the consequences were unfortunate.

--
Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.
    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honor more.

Parenting and The Prince

"It is better to be feared than to be loved." If I ever have kids I am totally going to brush up on my Machiavelli first.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323646604578400804035071688.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories

-M.

--

Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.

    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honor more.

Euphemisms

When I was younger, I spent some time looking for alternative expletives which could show emotion without sounding like a faux-swear. E.g. "smeg" shares no phonemes in common with any vulgarism in the English language, and I used it for a while, until one day I caught myself about to use it unconsciously instead of on purpose. And I decided I wanted to be the master of my own words, and dropped it in favor us simply using English. "Smeg!" becomes, "What a mess" or "How vexing."

I still say "Argh!" sometimes though, and "Wow."

--
Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.
    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honour more.

Science! 1940s to now

Lindzen asserts that scientific productivity has fallen dramatically since Vannevar's Bush day, starting in the 1960's, and asserts that this is due to a shift in the way scientists perceive their relationship with the public: from eliciting gratitude then to fear-mongering now. I am still digesting his argument, but it's an interesting paper littered with anecdotes and footnotes like this one:

The response of the IPCC officials makes it eminently clear that the IPCC is fundamentally a political body. If further evidence were needed, one simply has to observe the fact that the IPCC Summary for Policymakers will selectively cite results to emphasize negative consequences. Thus the summary for Working Group II observes that global warming will result in Hundreds of millions of people exposed to increased water stress. This, however, is based on work (Arnell, 2004) which actually shows that by the 2080s the net global population at risk declines by up to 2.1 billion people (depending on which scenario one wants to emphasize)! The IPCC further ignores the capacity to use build reservoirs to alleviate those areas they project as subject to drought (I am indebted to Indur Goklany for noting this example.)

http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/lindzen-on-climate-science-2010.pdf

-Max

--

Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.

    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honour more.

Natural selection (link)

http://westhunt.wordpress.com/2013/03/16/dan-freedmans-babies/ has an interesting story. I won't spoil the punch lines, but here's the intro:

Daniel Freedman was a professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago.  For his doctoral thesis, he did adoption studies with dogs.  He had noticed that different dog breeds had different personalities, and thought it would be interesting to see if personality was inborn, or if it was somehow caused by the way in which the mother raised her puppies.  Totally inborn.  Little beagles were irrepressibly friendly.  Shetland sheepdogs  were most sensitive to a loud voice or the slightest punishment. Wire-haired terriers were so tough and aggressive that Dan had to wear gloves when playing with puppies that were only three weeks old. Basenjis were aloof and independent.

He decided to try the same thing with human infants of different breeds.  Excuse me, different races. [snip the rest]

I love reading about interesting experiments.

-Max

--
Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.
    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honour more.

Climatology: the key question

From http://reason.com/archives/2013/03/15/why-do-people-believe-scientifically-unt

Climate change: The majority of climate scientists believe that human activity is causing the earth's temperatures to increase. A recent Pew Research poll found that two-thirds of Americans also believe that the earth is warming. But a deep partisan divide yawns between conservatives and liberals on the cause of the warming: Only 16 percent of conservative Republicans believe that human activity is responsible, whereas 77 percent of liberal Democrats do. Moderate Republicans and Democrats accept human responsibility by 38 and 51 percent, respectively. Advantage: Democrats.

This is a strange way of framing the debate. The question of interest is not whether human activity is "responsible" for the temperature rise between the 18th and 21st centuries. The key question is whether claims of impending calamity due to CO2-induced positive feedback temperature loops are well-founded.

To illustrate the difference, consider a case where the warming that predates the Industrial Revolution was solar-driven, but which moved the temperature equilibrium into a delicate position where increases in CO2 would raise the photosphere and trigger a phase change into a new, drier and warmer, equilibrium. In this hypothetical scenario, humans are not responsible for most past warming but will be responsible for large amounts of future warming.

The scientific debate is over whether claims that we are on that cusp are justified given the available evidence. I acknowledge that the political debate is a lot more simplistic, to the extent that there probably are people who believe that the United States ISN'T warmer than it was in 1776, which is empirically false.

--

Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.

    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honour more.

Grad school

The following comment from http://judithcurry.com/2013/03/17/obesity-of-the-u-s-scientific-research-enterprise/ reminds me why I dropped out of grad school. I don't feel like I'm one of the first-rate inteligences who truly belongs in academia.

[by miker613 | March 17, 2013 at 11:20 am]

"Just speaking from my own experience: Thirty years ago, I got a PhD in Math from one of the best programs in the country. I had a top GPA as an undergraduate from another of the best schools. And by the time I got my PhD, I knew I didn't want to do math any more. I wasn't needed. I did a pretty good piece of work for my doctorate, other people liked it and quoted it – but I knew I wasn't _needed_. Most people I knew weren't needed. We were filling in gaps, looking for things to work on that no one else had done yet, but I knew that if someone really good would take notice of my problem, he could solve it better in a short time. There were lots of mediocre people like me in my program, and one or two really really good ones, and we all knew the difference. David Hilbert said it once: There are two kinds of mathematicians – those who tackle and solve hard problems, and those who don't.

"I guess I don't have the right to speak to any field but math, but I wonder if it's the same: The really important work gets done by a few really good people, and everyone else makes a living."

--

Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.

    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honour more.

Desalination follow-up WAS RE: Graphene water filters

Desalination can also strain out minerals which are important for some crops. Interesting.

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/desalinated-water-can-harm-crops-researchers-warn-1.232848

-Max

--

Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.

    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honour more.

Graphene water filters

This seems like it may be important. A graphene-based water filter that's two orders of magnitude more efficient than existing filters, good enough to replace desalination plants. And it looks like graphene is going to become relatively cheap in the near future. I wonder what kind of impact this will have on agriculture? IIRC Israeli agriculture relies on desalination plants to irrigate their crops; what happens desalination gets cheap enough for Arab and African nations to afford it too? Seems like it could change some lives.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/13/us-usa-desalination-idUSBRE92C05720130313

The development could spare underdeveloped countries from having to build exotic, expensive pumping stations needed in plants that use a desalination process called reverse osmosis. "It's 500 times thinner than the best filter on the market today and a thousand times stronger," said John Stetson, the engineer who has been working on the idea. "The energy that's required and the pressure that's required to filter salt is approximately 100 times less."

-Max

--
Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.
    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honour more.

History

I'm not much into hate, but I hate the old Confederacy with a cold passion. If I had a time machine, I would love to go back and fetch a few old "slave power" die-hards like Alexander Stephens and Jefferson Davis just so I could show them a colorblind society and watch their heads explode.

Note: I'm not someone who necessarily thinks slavery per se is always evil--it's sometimes superior to killing your enemies out of hand. I just hate the Confederacy and all its triumphalist, bigoted rhetoric, and that they dared to call themselves American while perverting everything America ever stood for.

--
Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.
    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honour more.

Cost Transparency

I hope it takes off.

http://strata.oreilly.com/2012/08/analyzing-health-care-data-to-empower-patients.html

-Max

--

Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.

    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honour more.

Once upon a time...

Once upon a time there was a prophet named Moses who was in charge of a bunch of Israelites in the desert, probably the Sinai peninsula next to Saudi Arabia. There wasn't much food there, so God had arranged for food to appear (somehow) with the morning dew, around the camp. The people called this food "mana," meaning "Whatsit?", and for a while they were impressed. After a while, though, the miraculous morning mana meal began to seem less impressive, and people realized that it didn't have much of a taste. They began to complain about the taste of the mana to Moses, saying they wished they had stayed slaves in Egypt, where they could at least eat flesh like fish and fresh vegetables, instead of being trapped here in a desert, not being slaves.

This frustrated Moses to no end, because it was petulant and unreasonable, like the Israelites often were. Moses was sick of it. He asked God to just kill him so he wouldn't have to deal with them any more. God said "No. Instead I will give what they ask for: flesh, flesh, and more flesh until it comes out of their nostrils."

A couple of days later it started raining quails out of the sky. It rained quails until the whole camp was three feet deep in dead quails. The people were happy at first. And then a bunch of them died from a plague, which they probably caught from all the dead quails.

The end.

[From Numbers 11]

--

Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.

    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honour more.

That which is measured

"That which is measured, improves. That which is measured and reported improves exponentially." -Karl Pearson

I think these ideas are important.

Recently, Bill Gates wrote the following on the need for metrics other than "dollars spent": 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323539804578261780648285770.html

Harnessing steam power required many innovations, as William Rosen chronicles in the book "The Most Powerful Idea in the World." Among the most important were a new way to measure the energy output of engines and a micrometer dubbed the "Lord Chancellor" that could gauge tiny distances. Such measuring tools, Mr. Rosen writes, allowed inventors to see if their incremental design changes led to the improvements—such as higher power and less coal consumption—needed to build better engines. There's a larger lesson here: Without feedback from precise measurement, Mr. Rosen writes, invention is "doomed to be rare and erratic." With it, invention becomes "commonplace."

This may seem basic, but it is amazing how often it is not done and how hard it is to get right. Historically, foreign aid has been measured in terms of the total amount of money invested—and during the Cold War, by whether a country stayed on our side—but not by how well it performed in actually helping people. Closer to home, despite innovation in measuring teacher performance world-wide, more than 90% of educators in the U.S. still get zero feedback on how to improve.

He goes on to talk about some projects he's involved in, public health and education, which have benefited greatly from being able to measure progress.

-Max

--

Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.

    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honour more.

Celibacy

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/09/14/staying-celibate-before-marriage-was-best-thing-ive-ever-done/

--

Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.

    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honour more.

Re: Learning to program

Z.,

You mentioned

> "studying to learn" vs "studying to obtain certification". 

which reminds me of a story: not everyone is enamored of college degrees. From http://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/, a fun anecdote (emphasis added):

When I first went into the Boeing Company nearly half the aeronautical engineers at Boeing were not university graduates: they began as draftsmen right out of high school and over the years learned the job. The other evening I saw my old friend Paul Turner, one of the last non-degree engineers from the space program. He retired from North American Rockwell as project manager of a small but significant station in Shuttle. You don't have to have an expensive university degree to be a good engineer. It often helps – we used to have the slogan that the half-life of an engineering graduate was about seven years – but it also helps if you acquire the habit of staying current in your profession. The non-degree engineers always did. The best of the university graduate engineers did also, but there was also a significant number who stopped learning when they left university, and their half life was indeed about seven years.

The United States has the capability of regaining its position as the leading academic nation on Earth; but we have to change the accreditation system along with the whole notion of academic control of credentials. We need to get back to the notion that the best credential for doing a job is the ability to do it well. That particularly applies to teaching the young: our colleges of education, fully accredited, are shameless messes producing illiterate children. Shame.

I'm trying to be the kind of learner who doesn't have a half-life...

-M.

--

Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.

    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honour more.

Testing something new

This is the canvas dummy content

Good

Neither

Bad

William Law

In his final speeches and writings at Nauvoo, the Prophet occasionally mentions William Law, his estranged counselor as someone with a grudge against Joseph. This story helps put those statements in perspective.

http://scottwoodward.org/josephsmith_williamlawtriestokillinNauvoo.html

Joseph Smith had asked Charles Stoddard, age 14, to serve as a house boy for William Law. William Law was one of the Prophet's enemies, and felt by many to have led the charge on Carthage. Joseph would have Charles keep his eyes and ears open and report back to him what he heard William Law planning.
________________________________

[The following was recorded by Sarah Woodward Stoddard, mother of Charles Stoddard, in April 1844].

Dear Diary,

Charles had another faith promoting experience last night. Early in the morning, even while the darkness still hemmed out the light of day, Mr. Law, after he had been drinking and planning with his associates throughout the night, got Charles out of bed to clean and oil his gun. He said he was going to shoot the Prophet—only William Law called him "Old Joe Smith." Poor Charles was frightened beyond description, but Mr. Law stood over him and prodded him with his foot when Charles hesitated through fright and anxiety. Finally, when Mr. Law was satisfied with the way the gun was working he put one bullet in. He boasted he could kill the prophet with one shot. He sent Charles to bring the Prophet. He ran as fast as he could and delivered the message, but he begged the Prophet not to go to Mr. Law's as Mr. Law was drunk, and Charles was afraid he would carry through on his threat to shoot the Prophet in cold blood. As they walked the few blocks from the Mansion house to the Law residence, the Prophet assured Charles that no harm would come to him that day. Charles was frightened, and he said that it kept racing through his mind, "I am the one that cleaned the gun that is going to be used to kill the Prophet," until he was sick with fear. The Prophet, in the final attempt to calm my dear son, uttered the fateful words, "Mr. Law may someday kill me, Charles, but it won't be today."

As they approached their destination, Mr. Law came staggering out of the house shouting out what he intended to do. The Prophet said kindly and unafraid, "You sent for me, Mr. Law?" To which Mr. Law replied with oath that now he was going to do the whole world a favor by disposing of the Prophet with one shot. Calmly, the Prophet unbuttoned his shirt and bared his chest, and then said, "I'm ready now, Mr. Law." Charles said at this point he nearly fainted. Sick fear strangled him until he was speechless and paralyzed, unable to move a muscle. Mr. Law paced a few steps, turned, aimed, and pressed the trigger. There was complete silence. Then the air rang with profanity and Mr. Law turned on Charles, accusing him of fixing the gun so it would not go off and threatened to kill even Charles—my innocent, frightened, but faithful son. The Prophet, to divert Mr. Law's blame of Charles, suggested that a can be placed on a fence post for Mr. Law to take a practice shot. Relieved, Charles ran for a can and laid it on its side on a post. Mr. Law paced back, took aim, and fired. His one shot streaked through the exact center of the can. Even Mr. Law was quiet as if stunned. The Prophet buttoned up his shirt, gave Charles a meaningful look, and then said, "If you are finished with me now, Mr. Law, I have other things needing to be done." (As quoted by Robert H. Daines at BYU-Idaho Devotional, 28 May 2002)

-Max

--
Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.
    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honour more.

Scala vs F#

I suspect the reason why people say Scala is more OO and F# is more functional actually has little to do with functional programming per se: it's because F# is more oriented toward ADTs and Scala is more about OO. Since ADTs package functions in modules instead of object scopes, this gives F# a more applicative, function-oriented feel, even though there's really no technical difference between F# and Scala in terms of what you can express functionally. It's not that you can't do OO in F# or ADTs in Scala, it's just a matter of the native idiom leaning one way or the other.

If you want to understand ADT vs OO, the best paper I know is here:http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~wcook/Drafts/2009/essay.pdf (hat tip to Lambda the Ultimate). Essentially, in ADTs there is a hidden, shared implementation: the black box obscures the class implementation, but doesn't obscure the objects within the class from each other. (This is like C++ "private".) In OO, the public interface is the ONLY interface: every object is a black box. ADTs are suitable for efficient abstractions like sparse matrix multiplications which need access to each other's internals. When people say "object-oriented" they are often not clear on whether they really do mean object-oriented programming or ADT programming. Certainly C++/C#/Java/etc. are schizophrenic about which style they are trying to support. (For example, an "abstract class" in C++/C#/Java is a hybrid of interface and implementation, which makes it neither/both OO nor ADT. However, a Java interface is pure OO.)

--
Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.
    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honour more.

Technological advancement

[Cc J. and K.]

Great, unusually-insightful article on American manufacturing. I view this as the quintessential 21st century social dilemma: in a world where unskilled labor can be cheaply automated, what do you do with unskilled workers? As far as I can tell, the way education is lagging behind technological advancement is the chief cause of inequality growth, even though it gets blamed on other, politically-convenient factors. We need better, faster ways of learning.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/01/making-it-in-america/308844/?single_page=true

Some good quotes:

I had come to Greenville to better understand what, exactly, is happening to manufacturing in the United States, and what the future holds for people like Maddie—people who still make physical things for a living and, more broadly, people (as many as 40 million adults in the U.S.) who lack higher education, but are striving for a middle-class life.

There's a joke in cotton country that a modern textile mill employs only a man and a dog. The man is there to feed the dog, and the dog is there to keep the man away from the machines.

Standard will not drop a line in the U.S. and begin outsourcing it to China for a few pennies in savings. "I need to save a lot to go to China," says Ed Harris, who is in charge of identifying new manufacturing sources in Asia. "There's a lot of hassle: shipping costs, time, Chinese companies aren't as reliable. We need to save at least 40 percent off the U.S. price. I'm not going to China to save 10 percent."

Tony explains that Maddie has a job for two reasons. First, when it comes to making fuel injectors, the company saves money and minimizes product damage by having both the precision and non-precision work done in the same place. Even if Mexican or Chinese workers could do Maddie's job more cheaply, shipping fragile, half-finished parts to another country for processing would make no sense. Second, Maddie is cheaper than a machine. It would be easy to buy a robotic arm that could take injector bodies and caps from a tray and place them precisely in a laser welder. Yet Standard would have to invest about $100,000 on the arm and a conveyance machine to bring parts to the welder and send them on to the next station. As is common in factories, Standard invests only in machinery that will earn back its cost within two years. For Tony, it's simple: Maddie makes less in two years than the machine would cost, so her job is safe—for now. If the robotic machines become a little cheaper, or if demand for fuel injectors goes up and Standard starts running three shifts, then investing in those robots might make sense.

Productivity, in and of itself, is a remarkably good thing. Only through productivity growth can the average quality of human life improve. Because of higher agricultural productivity, we don't all have to work in the fields to make enough food to eat... Throughout much of the 20th century, simultaneous technological improvements in both agriculture and industry happened to create conditions that were favorable for people with less skill. The development of mass production allowed low-skilled farmers to move to the city, get a job in a factory, and produce remarkably high output. Typically, these workers made more money than they ever had on the farm, and eventually, some of their children were able to get enough education to find less-dreary work. In that period of dramatic change, it was the highly skilled craftsperson who was more likely to suffer a permanent loss of wealth. Economists speak of the middle part of the 20th century as the "Great Compression," the time when the income of the unskilled came closest to the income of the skilled. The double shock we're experiencing now—globalization and computer-aided industrial productivity—happens to have the opposite impact: income inequality is growing, as the rewards for being skilled grow and the opportunities for unskilled Americans diminish.

-M.

--
Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.
    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honour more.

"Knife control"

This is what comes of focusing on symptoms ("gun control") instead of root causes. You just wind up with a different set of symptoms.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/british-doctors-call-for-ban-on-long-kitchen-knives-to-end-stabbings/

A team from West Middlesex University Hospital said violent crime is on the increase – and kitchen knives are used in as many as half of all stabbings.

They argued many assaults are committed impulsively, prompted by alcohol and drugs, and a kitchen knife often makes an all too available weapon.

They consulted 10 top chefs from around the UK, and found such knives have little practical value in the kitchen.

None of the chefs felt such knives were essential, since the point of a short blade was just as useful when a sharp end was needed.

The researchers say legislation to ban the sale of long pointed knives would be a key step in the fight against violent crime.

"We suggest that banning the sale of long pointed knives is a sensible and practical measure that would have this effect."

-Max


--
Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.
    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honour more.

"Omitted variable fraud"

"Omitted variable fraud." I like the term. This concisely describes the behavior I have been observing for as long as I have been paying attention to the issue, ever since Gavin Schmidt took on Jerry Pournelle with the repeated assertion that direct solar forcing failed to explain the temperature change in NASA's models, and that CO2 was responsible. He never acknowledged the gigantic leap of faith he was taking in believing his models over the historical data.

Anyway, I quote the money paragraph first and then some of the background.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/22/omitted-variable-fraud-vast-evidence-for-solar-climate-driver-rates-one-oblique-sentence-in-ar5/

My training is in economics where we are very familiar with what statisticians call "the omitted variable problem" (or when it is intentional, "omitted variable fraud"). Whenever an explanatory variable is omitted from a statistical analysis, its explanatory power gets misattributed to any correlated variables that are included. This problem is manifest at the very highest level of AR5, and is built into each step of its analysis.

Introduction to the "omitted variable fraud" critique, continued

For the 1750-2010 period examined, two variables correlate strongly with the observed warming (and hence with each other). Solar magnetic activity and atmospheric CO2 were both trending upwards over the period, and both stepped up to much higher levels over the second half of the 20th century. These two correlations with temperature change give rise to the two main competing theories of 20th century warming. Was it driven by rapidly increasing human release of CO2, or by the 80 year "grand maximum" of solar activity that began in the early 1920′s? ("Grand minima and maxima of solar activity: new observational constraints," Usoskin et al. 2007.)

The empirical evidence in favor of the solar explanation is overwhelming. Dozens of peer-reviewed studies have found a very high degree of correlation (.5 to .8) between solar-magnetic activity and global temperature going back many thousands of years (Bond 2001, Neff 2001, Shaviv 2003, Usoskin 2005, and many others listed below). In other words, solar activity "explains," in the statistical sense, 50 to 80% of past temperature change.

Such a high degree of correlation over such long time periods implies causality, which can only go one way. Global temperature cannot be driving solar activity, so there must be some mechanism by which solar activity is driving or modulating global temperature change. The high degree of correlation also suggests that solar activity is the primarydriver of global temperature on every time scale studied (which is pretty much every time scale but the Milankovitch cycle).

In contrast, records of CO2 and temperature reveal no discernable warming effect of CO2. There is a correlation between atmospheric CO2 and temperature, but with CO2 changes following temperature changes by an average of about 800 years (Caillon 2003), indicating that it is temperature change that is driving atmospheric CO2 change (as it should, since warming oceans are able to hold less CO2). This does not rule out the possibility that CO2 also drives temperature, and in theory a doubling of CO2 should cause about a 1 degree increase in temperature before any feedback effects are accounted, but feedbacks could be negative (dampening rather than amplifying temperature forcings), so there no reason, just from what we know about the greenhouse mechanism, that CO2 has to be a significant player. The one thing we can say is that whatever the warming effect of CO2, it is not detectable in the raw CO2 vs. temperature data.

This is in glaring contrast to solar activity, which lights up like a neon sign in the raw data. Literally dozens of studies finding .5 to .8 degrees of correlation with temperature. 

-Max

--

Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.

    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honour more.

Inflation-adjusted revenues/outlays for federal government

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2013/assets/hist.pdf

See table 1.3.

-Max

--
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

"I said, 'Ye are gods'"

K,

This thought may be of interest to you.

-Max.

---------- Forwarded message ----------

Hi J.,

Remember how you were reading your way through the Old Testament the other year? I know you like the whole context to things; do you mind if I share with you some of the most interesting parts of the scriptures, and some associated cultural/historical/scriptural context that goes with it? Form your own opinions of course, but I'll give you what information I can.

One scripture that almost nobody seems to know about or talk about is in Psalms 82. It's not really clear who wrote it or when--it claims to be written by Asaph, King David's court musician--but someone thought it was important enough to include in the Hebrew Bible, and it reveals an interesting attitude toward human beings: we are "gods" ("elohim" in Hebrew, literally "powers", from "el" = "force" and "im"=pluralizer).

Psalms 82:1-8 God standeth in the congregation of the mighty; he judgeth among the gods. How long will ye judge unjustly, and accept the persons of the wicked? Selah. Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy. Deliver the poor and needy: rid them out of the hand of the wicked. They know not, neither will they understand; they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth are out of course. I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High. But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes. Arise, O God, judge the earth: for thou shalt inherit all nations. [emphasis added] [BTW, I'm not sure what Selah means, but I think it's a musical term of some sort.]

What is especially interesting about this scripture is that Jesus used it to win an argument which almost got him killed. In John 10, Jesus is in the middle of teaching some fairly radical things, including claiming God for his father, when the Jews accuse him of blasphemy. They weren't stupid--they understood that claiming kinship is claiming similarity; the potential to grow up to be like one's parents. So to them claiming God as his father was basically claiming to be a God, which was blasphemy to them. Jesus basically responds, "Hey, in your own scriptures it calls all of you gods (without approving your conduct). How then can it be blasphemous for me to merely say I'm the son of God, which I actually am, when he sent me and commanded me to teach you in his behalf?" Since they couldn't win the argument, they just went back to trying to kill him. Funny, huh? :)

John 10:23-39 And Jesus walked in the temple in Solomon's porch. Then came the Jews round about him, and said unto him, How long dost thou make us to doubt? If thou be the Christ, tell us plainly. Jesus answered them, I told you, and ye believed not: the works that I do in my Father's name, they bear witness of me. But ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep, as I said unto you. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and noman is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand. 30 I and my Father are one. Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them, Many good works have I shewed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me? The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God. Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken; Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God? If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works: that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him. Therefore they sought again to take him: but he escaped out of their hand,

What this says to me is that the King James translation of Psalm 82 is correct. There are people who will tell you that Psalm 82 is talking about angels, or false pagan gods, but if these people were right, Jesus wouldn't have used the scripture to win his argument. No, what Psalm 82 says is that we, human beings, are the offspring of God and share his nature--there aren't separate things called "humans" and "angels" and "demons" and "gods". Rather, these are all the same fundamental kind of thing, and which one a given individual turns into in the long run depends upon the individual.

Maybe this is why we find stories about superhumans (Keanu Reeves in the Matrix, Castiel, Rand al Thor, etc.) so interesting: because we sense at some level that this is who we really are, if the scriptures are true--and they are. If you ask God, he will tell you so. He's your Father and you are his daughter, and he cares about you. It's true and I know it.

But my words don't mean anything. You have to ask for yourself, when you're ready. Good luck, be well, be happy!

Love,

M.

--

Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.

    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honour more.