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Simple Encryption: Introduction and Substitution Ciphers

The starting point talking about encryption is to understand what the point of it is; what it's supposed to do, what problems it's supposed to avoid. Encryption is fundamentally about communication: you've got two parties who want to communicate, but don't want anyone else to be able to listen in. They way that you do that is by sharing a secret. You use that secret to somehow modify the information that you're going to send, so that it can't be read by someone who doesn't have the secret. People often think of encryption as a way of using a password to hide information, but a password is…

Scientists and Journalists, Part Deux

Having been encouraged by ScienceBlogling John Wilkins, I'm going to follow up on my post about science journalism, and, no doubt, get myself into further trouble. First, though, I want to clarify some points. Without going into specific detail, I work for a non-profit organization that deals with infectious disease. My primary job--and the one that pays my bills and keeps the lights on--is to conduct and develop research projects. However, I'm also the primary person who deals with questions about the 'science' of our issue (we also have clinical and economic experts). An average day is…

Sunday Sacrilege: Magic words

Words are the great ju-ju — some apparently believe we have the power to call up Satan and summon the lightning with the choice use of language. One of the common quirks of many Christian and Jewish sites on the internet is the insistence on writing G_D, as if including an "o" turns the word into a Rune of Power, is an expression of disrespect, or perhaps instills some strange fear in the writer. It's God as Voldemort, and all I can say is F_CK THAT. There ought to be a room in every house to swear in. It's dangerous to have to repress an emotion like that. Mark Twain God damn it. I was…

The Absence of a Left-Wing Economics and the Coming of the Lost Decade

Actually, it will probably be several decades. While details of the budget ceiling negotations haven't been released, the initial reports sound pretty awful, with $2.4 trillion of cuts over ten years with $1 trillion in discretionary cuts (that's stuff like NIH and NSF, by the way). It's pretty clear, at this point, that Obama wants massive cuts to happen, in part because he doesn't really understand how the deficits arose: While I am reporting this, I should note that the President made news regarding his understanding of the origins of the deficit and our slow growth recently when he…

Why The Dumb Vinci Code matters to America, you and I

Below GrrlScientist asks why The Da Vinci Code is "bad history." I believe it is bad history because someone whose work I respect and have enjoyed has pointed out manifold errors, incluing in a book which covered this ground. His name is Bart Ehrman, and he is the head of Relgious Studies at UNC. I've read two of his books, Lost Christianities and Misquoting Jesus. Erhman went through a phase of fudamentalist Christianity, but his need to know the New Testament in the original led him to learning Latin and Greek, and a Ph.D. In the process, he became an agnostic. Here are some errors…

Global Warming Denialism and Bearing False Witness

Both Digby and Amanda Marcotte have been asking why global warming seems to be driving much of the right wing berserk. While I agree that part of the reason is the ever-present desire to punch a hippie in the face, I think Fred Clark at the Slacktivist hits on a key point in these two posts: "It isn't intended to deceive others. It's intended to invite others to participate with you in deception." In the two posts, Clark describes the fervent belief by a considerable number of evangelicals in the belief that the Proctor and Gamble corporation (P&G) was involved in satanic cults, which…

Migratory Monarch Butterflies 'See' Earth's GeoMagnetic Field

tags: evolutionary biology, behavioral ecology, biochemistry, biophysics, magnetoreception, photoreceptor, cryptochromes, geomagnetic fields, butterflies, Monarch Butterfly, Danaus plexippus, birds, migration, signal transduction, researchblogging.org,peer-reviewed research, peer-reviewed paper Every autumn, millions of monarch butterflies, Danaus plexippus, each weighing less than one gram (one US penny weighs 2.5 grams), migrate nearly 4000 kilometers (3000 miles) between their summer breeding grounds in the United States and their wintering areas either in southern California or in the…

Moving Overseas, Part 11

Things are moving really quickly now, and of course, I also had several emergencies I had to take care of, plus I have several other things I must do, such as must notify my DonorsChoose prize winners, and finish rewrites on a Nature piece that are overdue. (I've never missed a deadline before, so this alone is extremely stressful). So basically, my stress levels are still extremely high, but I've just traded one source of stressors for another. All last week was a nightmare, since I had been calling all the East Coast offices of USFWS -- as many as a dozen phone calls per day, trying to…

Finding vindication in utter confusion

Salon has an interview with Karen Armstrong, and I don't know whether the interviewer just did a poor job or whether her ideas really are that sloppy and confused. She definitely has interesting ideas about religion, but while she's dismissing simplistic ideas about gods and the afterlife on the one hand, she's also clinging desperately and irrationally to nebulous beliefs about religion and spirituality and the art and poetry of myth. Armstrong is smart enough to see the hokum in dogma, but she's still so strongly wedded to the idea of religion that she struggles to contrive fuzzy…

Popcorn workers' lung

You've probably never heard of bronchiolitis obliterans and you certainly don't want to have it. The name tells the story. The bronchioles are the smaller airway tubes that transport oxygen and carbon dioxide to and from the portions of your lungs where the gases are exchanged in the blood. If you obliterate those small tubes, well, you figure it out. The condition is debilitating and sometimes fatal. As I said, you don't want it. Want it or not, that's the fate of dozens of workers in factories that make manufacture microwave popcorn or the artificial butter flavor that goes into the popcorn…

A Science Festival that Sets the Standard for Inspiration

Guest Blog by Festival X-STEM Speaker Dr. Joe Schwarcz How do you inspire students toward careers in science, and combat scientific illiteracy at the same time? First, you spend two years planning the USA Science & Engineering Festival, the largest of its kind in the world. Then you rent the gigantic Washington Convention Center to host it and line up 3,000 displays, many of which feature hands-on activities. You organize more than 150 stage presentations by Nobel laureates, athletes, astronauts, engineers and scientists of all kinds. You invite the likes of Bill Nye the Science Guy,…

High Risk, High Return

By Guest Blogger Jason Osborne Explorer, Innovator, and co-founder of both Paleo Quest™, a non-profit citizen science organization, and SharkFinder™ When most people think about scuba diving, they envision coral reefs and colorful tropical fish. But for me and my fellow professional-amateur paleontologist Aaron Alford, this is not the case. As the cofounders of non-profit organization Paleo Quest, diving is a tool for us. It is a method we use to reach places most people wouldn’t dare to explore. Imagine diving in a river with zero visibility and heavy currents – and throw in some submerged…

New Feature -- Chemistry in the Spotlight Submitted by Joe Schwarcz -- USA Science & Engineering Festival Nifty Fifty Speaker

Read more.... These days the eyes of the academic chemistry community are riveted on a courtroom in Los Angeles where UCLA chemistry professor Patrick Harran stands accused of “willfully violating occupational safety and health standards and causing the death of a young technician in his laboratory.” Many professors are following the trial with trepidation, mindful of the possibility that they could be the ones facing the music in that courtroom. So far there is only one certainty about this evolving drama. It is tragic for everyone involved. A young woman with great promise for the future is…

USA Science & Engineering Festival Announces Science Dream Team: Honorary Congressional Host Committee Pledges Support to National Mall Event This October

Here is the most recent press release from the Festival published on Businesswire. WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Over 22 senators and 64 Congressional representatives announced their support for improving U.S. science, technology, engineering and mathematics education (STEM) today by joining the USA Science & Engineering Festival Honorary Congressional Host Committee. Members of this bi-partisan committee represent over 32 states, the District of Columbia and the U.S. territory of American Samoa. The goal of the USA Science & Engineering Festival and the Honorary Congressional Host…

Modeling antiviral resistance, III: Introduction. What's the paper about?

[A series of posts explaining a paper on the mathematical modeling of the spread of antiviral resistance. Links to other posts in the series by clicking tags, "Math model series" or "Antiviral model series" under Categories, left sidebar. Preliminary post here. Table of contents at end of this post.] As promised, this post will start a detailed examination of the paper by Lipsitch et al., "Antiviral resistance and the control of pandemic influenza," published in PLoS Medicine, section by section. We hope you have your own copy, available here (see previous post for more details). We'll start…

Freethinker Sunday Sermonette: CNN, as fearless as always

Austin Cline is one of the more incisive regular writers on atheism. This week he discusses a Paula Zahn show on CNN that begins with a brief vignette about couple in a small town in Mississippi who complained to their son's public elementary school principal about time spent in bible study and prayer. Yes, his public elementary school. For their trouble they became outcasts. No one would speak to them or let their children play with their children. When it was later revealed they were atheists, the father's boss got calls complaining he had brought an atheist to town. People drove parked in…

More on the human trials of a "universal" flu vaccine

One of the good things about the pandemic flu threat (if you'll let me put it that way) is the stimulus it has provided for vaccine technology. While current flu vaccines are still mired in horse and buggy technology of egg-based production, all sorts of alternative ways of making antigen or stimulating an immune response are being worked on. Most of them involve the major antigens of the flu virus, hemagglutinin (the H part of subtype designation) and neuriminidase (the N part). They are on the viral surface and easily "seen" by the immune system. There is also a little bit of another…

Singularly silly singularity

Since I had the effrontery to critize futurism and especially Ray Kurzweil, here's a repost of something I wrote on the subject a while back…and I'll expand on it at the end. Kevin Drum picks at Kurzweil—a very good thing, I think—and expresses bafflement at this graph (another version is here, but it's no better): (Another try: here's a cleaner scan of the chart.) (Click for larger image) You see, Kurzweil is predicting that the accelerating pace of technological development is going to lead to a revolutionary event called the Singularity in our lifetimes. Drum has extended his graph (the…

Do We Also Taste Just Like Chicken?

Perhaps. But we do other stuff just like chicken (December 09, 2004): ------------------------------------------------ Fantastic news in science: Researchers compare chicken, human genomes http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-12/nhgr-rcc120804.php Some highlights: Chicks have less junk DNA: In their paper published in Nature, members of the International Chicken Genome Sequencing Consortium report that the chicken genome contains significantly less DNA than the human genome, but approximately the same number of genes. Researchers estimate that the chicken has about 20,000-23,000…

Long-acting contraceptives for teens

Last week, the American Academy of Pediatrics published a "Contraceptives for Adolescents" policy statement that advises pediatricians to consider long-acting reversible contraception (LARC) methods as first-line contraceptive choices for adolescents. LARC methods include contraceptive implants that can be inserted into the upper arm (which can remain in place for three years) and intrauterine devices (with different versions approved for three or five years). Unlike condoms or birth-control pills, which require repeated correct use, LARCs only need to be administered once. They have failure…

Hazards behind a chicken dinner: US poultry workers ask USDA and OSHA to protect their safety

Nearly 50 billion pounds of chicken (about eight billion chickens’ worth, or 37 billion pounds of poultry products) were processed in the United States in 2012 by about half a million workers, many of whom handle more than 100 birds per minute. This labor involves standing in chilled processing plant facilities, cutting, gutting, scalding, defeathering and hanging birds as they speed by on automated machinery, often at more than one bird per second. According to the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), since 1975,workers in this industry have consistently suffered injuries…

How Do You Get to Carnegie Hall?

The old punchline "Practice, practice, practice" applies to more than musical performance. It applies to the project of coming to terms with our new circumstances, and perhaps embracing our new lives. If you live in parts of Japan right now, or in the flooded Mississippi, or in areas recently devastated by tornadoes, you know that the day when we leave off practicing and begin performing can be far closer than you ever thought. Ideally, I feel like my last post in the Adapting In Place series ought to be something rousing and inspiring. But at the moment, I think the quiet exhortation to…

Squash my Dog Fears and other Pumpkin Thoughts

There are coyotes denned right across the road, which is one of the reasons we have Mac the Marshmallow. Mac is a 110lb Great Pyrenees dog, a livestock guardian breed the approximate size of a shetland pony. Asher, my four year old, has been known to ride him. We call him "Mac the Marshmallow" because he's the color of one, and has the same personality. He's fearless when it comes to predators, but so gentle one of my cats will stick his head in Mac's mouth without worry. When a rabbit got out of cage at our house, Mac caught it, and, instead of doing it harm, washed it. For hours.…

New York Times on Peak Oil..and the Problem of History

You learn pretty quickly to adjust for what any mainstream media says about peak oil and anyone who does any kind of preparation. Consider the case of my friend Kathie Breault who has appeared in various newspaper and television accounts. Kathie is grandmother, a midwife and a permaculturist, and about the least "survivalist" person you can imagine. She knits stuff for her grandkids and teaches them to garden, rides her bike everywhere and is starting up a homebirth midwifery practice, helping women with little access to good health care give birth safely. And yet in an ABC Nightline…

How do you make a cephalopod drool?

We're all familiar with Pavlov's conditioning experiments with dogs. Dogs were treated to an unconditioned stimulus — something to which they would normally respond with a specific behavior, in this case, meat juice which would cause them to drool. Then they were simultaneously exposed to the unconditioned stimulus and a new stimulus, the conditioned stimulus, that they would learn to associate with the tasty, drool-worthy stimulus — a bell. Afterwards, ringing a bell alone would cause the dogs to make the drooling response. The ability to make such an association is a measure of the…

Improving medical care---arrogant doctors are a distractor

(Tangentially related podcast here) Here's the thing: all this talk about arrogance in medicine is a red herring. It's distracting us from the real question that we should all be asking: how do we improve quality medical care? The personality of individual physicians is important, but not very, just as the medical mistakes of individuals have limited significance. As medicine has become more science-based, we have learned some important lessons about how to prevent and treat disease, and while the physician-patient relationship will always be important, as will the relationship between…

YearlyKos aftermath

Apologies for the silence; as I mentioned, August is a crazy month for me. I hope to get back to some heavier science posts some point here, but those will, unfortunately, have to wait a bit. In the meantime, I did want to say a bit about last week's science discussions at YearlyKos, featuring (L-R) Ed, Sean, and Chris; More after the jump. (All photos courtesy of Lindsay). First, a bit about what went on. I arrived there Thursday, and the first order of events was to get ready for the Science bloggers' caucus Thursday afternoon. This was pretty much a no-holds-barred, unscripted…

The Executive Order's Effect on Regulation: Science & Technology Hearing

By Liz Borkowski Earlier today, the House of Respresentatives Committee on Science and Technology held a hearing on President Bushâs amendements to Executive Order 12866, and three of the witnesses painted a dismal picture of regulation under these new rules. (The fourth, William Kovacs of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, suggested that small businesses are drowning under regulations and the new requirements are needed to stem the tide.) David Michaels and Celeste Monforton have also written here about why this new order is problematic. Bushâs amended executive order is the latest version of an…

A Glance at Hyperreal Numbers

Since we talked about the surreals, I thought it would be interesting to take a *very* brief look at an alternative system that also provides a way of looking at infinites and infinitessimals: the *hyperreal* numbers. The hyperreal numbers are not a construction like the surreals; instead they're defined by axiom. The basic idea is that for the normal real numbers, there are a set of basic statements that we can make - statements of first order logic; and there is a basic structure of the set: it's an *ordered field*. Hyperreals add the "number" ω, the size of the set of natural numbers, so…

I'll be condescending when condescension is deserved

And deserved it is, in this remarkably ignorant article by a creationist named Peter Heck. It starts out very, very badly. It never ceases to amaze me how intellectually condescending evolutionary naturalists can be. Keep in mind, these are folks who believe that an indescribably tiny wad of nothingness exploded into a fully functional, structured, and ordered universe of orbiting planets and complex creatures without any supernatural agency involved. They are the ones who cling to a theory known as spontaneous generation - the notion that dead matter can just suddenly pop to life. They…

G.R.O.S.S.

It was at the moment that my sons were assigning our official titles that I realized that I live in G.R.O.S.S.  Their father was "The Supreme Dictator of the Universe."  Isaiah at 9 deemed himself "El Tigre Numero Uno." (The fact that he is not actually a tiger has nothing to do with it, I'm told.)  Simon wanted to be "Imperial Gladiator and Prime Minister Tward."  Asher dithered over several possible choices, each more grandiose than the other.  And your blogiste?  Well, as Isaiah put it "Someone has to be the Bossy Evil Space Crab, and you are the bossiest Mommy." Those of you who fondly…

Chelifores, chelicerae, and invertebrate evolution

One of the most evocative creatures of the Cambrian is Anomalocaris, an arthropod with a pair of prominent, articulated appendages at the front of its head. Those things are called great appendages, and they were thought to be unique to certain groups of arthropods that are now extinct. A while back, I reported on a study of pycnogonids, the sea spiders, that appeared to show that that might not be the case: on the basis of neural organization and innervation, that study showed that the way pycnogonid chelifores (a pair of large, fang-like structures at the front of the head) were innervated…

Carnival of Cities

tags: blog carnivals, Carnival of Cities Okay, this is what you've all been waiting for, the Carnival of Cities, where you can read about people's experiences with either visiting or living in various cities around the world. So without further ado, I will let you tuck in! North America Gudrun and his family went on a quick vacation to San Diego, California over the school break. He includes his perspectives on Sea World, the San Diego Zoo and Legoland as well as some hotel recommendations, should you wish to follow in his footsteps. One of my fellow sciencebloggers, Sandra, sent in this…

“Organic, schmorganic” – unless it’s your child’s ability to learn that’s impaired by pesticides

by Elizabeth Grossman “Organic, schmorganic,” wrote New York Times foreign editor and International Herald Tribune editor-at-large Roger Cohen, summing up his “takeaway” from the study by Stanford University researchers that examined studies comparing the nutritional value and pesticide residues in organic and “conventionally” grown food. The study concluded that evidence was lacking to show that organic food is more nutritious than conventionally grown food, but that organic food did have about 30 percent fewer pesticide residues. “I’d rather be against nature and have more people better fed…

The trends, IF they continue, are in our favor

I just got around to reading this very nice article by Gregory Paul and Phil Zuckerman, which we godless heathen ought to find reassuring and optimistic. They describe how religion is fading, even here in the United States, and that it is a natural consequence of economic trends. In particular, the main reason atheism is growing isn't that we've got lots of wild-eyed proselytizers, it's simply that security and an absence of fear make religion irrelevant and even unattractive. Rather than religion being an integral part of the American character, the main reason the United States is the only…

If it's good for food safety, does it translate to worker safety?

The US Senate passed today the Food Safety Modernization Act on a by a 73 to 25 vote. More than a dozen Republican Senators broke ranks with their leadership and voted in favor of the bill: Alexander (TN), Brown (MA), Burr (NC), Collins (ME), Enzi (WY), Grassley (IA), Gregg (NH), Johanns (NE), Kirk (IL), LeMieux (FL), Lugar (IN), Murkowski (AK), Snowe (ME), Vitter (LA), and Voinovich (OH). Supporters of the bill are calling it a milestone that will provide better protection for consumers from foodborne illness (here, here, here.) Section 103 of the food safety bill (S.510), will require…

Study: One-third of U.S. children with harmful lead exposures going unidentified

Right now, according to public health officials, about half a million U.S. kids have blood lead levels that could harm their health. However, new research finds many more children — hundreds of thousands more — are likely going unidentified. In a study published last week in Pediatrics, researchers estimated that while 1.2 million cases of elevated blood lead levels (EBLL) likely occurred between 1999 and 2010, only 607,000 were reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That data gap not only means kids are likely going without needed treatment and services, but that public…

Occupational Health News Roundup

At the Toronto Star, Sara Mojtehedzadeh reports on the “lethal legacy” of a General Electric plant in the Canadian city of Peterborough, Ontario, where hundreds of compensation claims have been filed for illnesses that workers say were caused by occupational chemical exposures. In fact, one occupational health expert described the plant as a “cancer generator.” Mojtehedzadeh reports that a study commissioned by General Electric and that the Star obtained found that male workers at the plant were up to 57 percent more likely to die of lung cancer than the general population, while female…

Disease outbreak guarantees: A proposal to build public health capacity in developing nations

In 2005, the World Health Assembly adopted a revised version of its International Health Regulations, a legally binding treaty among 196 nations to boost global health security and strengthen the world’s capacity to confront serious disease threats such as Ebola and SARS. A decade later, just one-third of countries have the ability to respond to a public health emergency. That’s why Rebecca Katz thinks it’s time to get creative. “How can we think creatively about incentives for countries to build the required public health capacity under international treaty obligations,” Katz, an associate…

Whole Woman's Health decision important but not a fix-all

The 5-3 Supreme Court decision in Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt last week was a welcome step for women's health, but resulted in the removal of only some of the barriers many US women still face in accessing abortion services. At issue in the case was Texas law HB 2, which required abortion facilities to meet the standards of ambulatory surgical centers and providers to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of a facility. In the opinion of the Court, Justice Breyer explains "neither of these provisions offers medical benefits sufficient to justify the burdens upon…

IT'S A FRACKIN’ CRACKER!

There are days when it is agony to read the news, because people are so goddamned stupid. Petty and stupid. Hateful and stupid. Just plain stupid. And nothing makes them stupider than religion. Here's a story that will destroy your hopes for a reasonable humanity. Webster Cook says he smuggled a Eucharist, a small bread wafer that to Catholics symbolic of the Body of Christ after a priest blesses it, out of mass, didn't eat it as he was supposed to do, but instead walked with it. This isn't the stupid part yet. He walked off with a cracker that was put in his mouth, and people in the church…

Study: Chemical alternative in BPA-free products may not be safer

Manufacturers who market their products as “BPA-free” aren’t just sending consumers a message about chemical composition. The underlying message is about safety — as in, this product is safe or least more safe than products that do contain BPA. However earlier this month, another study found that a common BPA alternative — BPS — may not be safer at all. “BPS works very similarly to BPA,” said Nancy Wayne, a reproductive endocrinologist and professor of physiology at the University of California-Los Angeles David Geffen School of Medicine. “We’re not the first to show this, but what’s captured…

Scientists combine evolutionary biology and mathematics to reverse antibiotic resistance

For more than a decade, biologist Mariam Barlow has been working on the theory that administering antibiotics on a rotating basis could be a solution to antibiotic resistance. After years of research, Barlow had lots of data, but she needed a more precise way to make sense of it all — something that was so specific it could easily be used to treat patients. So, she joined forces with a team of mathematicians. And the amazing results could help solve an enormous, worldwide problem. In a nutshell, the team of biologists and mathematicians developed a software program that generates a road map…

What’s at stake in TSCA reform

When negotiations over legislation to reform the 39-year-old Toxics Substance Control Act (TSCA) broke down this past fall, among the major points that remained unresolved were how a revised TSCA would treat state and other local chemicals management regulations and how – and under what timelines – the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would prioritize chemicals for safety review. As of early this year, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle in the House and Senate have issued statements about their commitment to produce a bipartisan bill. Chemical industry trade associations and…

Less Dorky Poll: Karaoke Supernova

So, here's a different sort of scenario for an audience-participation post: Imagine that you are in a weirdly well-stocked karaoke bar, and you have to sing a song. There's no way out of it-- if you don't you'll lose your job, rabid squid will eat your family, deranged America-hating terrorists will kill a puppy, whatever. The bar has absolutely any song you might want, no matter how obscure, and you only have to do one. What song would you sing? This post really begins with a conversation at Readercon, where it was noted that the World SF Convention will be held in Yokohama in 2007. Kate and…

Shop Days

The last couple of days at work have been Shop Days, with a fair bit of time spent in the department's machine shop making holes in a metal box. This would, I'm sure, be the occasion of much hilarity among my old junior high shop teachers, as my ineptitude in both metal and wood shop was pretty impressive, back in the seventh and eighth grades. I've gotten considerably more coordinated since those exceptionally gawky days, though, and I can use a drill press or a mill without too much trouble now, though no-one will ever mistake me for a machinist. In a certain sense, Shop Days are among the…

High Priest Epstein in Newsweek

Well, you know it's not going to be a good article when it's found on Newsweek's goofy "Beliefwatch" section, and it has this kind of inauspicious beginning: It may not be fair to call what's happening in the atheist community a backlash, since atheists have always been and continue to be one of the smallest, most derided groups in the country. Right. And since we're a minority and we're derided, why, we must be wrong! Of course, the facts are on the author's side—we are a minority. We need to grow. I think we'd all admit to that. What's weird right now is how journalists report it. In a…

Beyond Baryons

"In any case, the number three fitted perfectly the way quarks occur in nature." -Murray Gell-Mann You might think that we know it all, at least as far as knowing-it-all is possible. After all, we know that matter is made up of atoms, which are made up of electrons and nuclei, and the nuclei are made up of protons and neutrons, and then the protons and neutrons are made up of quarks and gluons. Image credit: Hyak / Martin Savage, eScience Institute, University of Washington. Along with the electrons, the quarks and gluons are -- as far as we know -- indivisible, which places them among the…

Logitech Ultrathin Touch Mouse: Apple Magic Mouse Replacement

Problems with the Apple Magic Mouse I had been using the stock Apple Magic Mouse on an iMac. The right click often didn’t work properly. Also, selecting and dragging files in Finder, or the Finder replacement I use (PathFinder) often failed. I figured the former was related to the mouse but assumed the latter was related to the OS. That turns out to not be the case. The Magic Mouse will run on any AA batteries but if you don’t want to change the batteries a lot and have other problems, you need to use super-duper electronic device batteries. I think I was spending at least $50 a year on…

Clinton Likely To Win Democratic Party Nomination

Almost exactly 50% of the votes have been cast in the Democratic Party primary and caucus process. I've been updating a model to predict primary and caucus results all along, and the model has done fairly well. The most recent update, however, was a bit off. That update involved separating states into two groups, southern vs northern, then calculating different sets of likely voting patterns by ethnicity for those two groups, and integrating that with estimates of ethnic distribution ("white, black, hispanic") among Democratic voters by state. What I did not do in those models was to…