Random
rallain | November 10, 2009Maybe this isn't that mysterious. However, quite some time ago my daughter found this rock in the backyard. First, you must understand that this is an odd occurrence. In this part of Louisiana, there really aren't any rocks, just dirt. When she showed it to me, I readily dismissed it as some lava rock from someone's garden. That was the end of the story until a year later when she found it again. This time, I held it and realized it was way too dense to be a a normal lava rock. Holding it up to a magnet, I found that there was some interaction.
Skip forward a little bit of time. I had…
catdynamics | November 6, 2009Plot complexity is not, in and of itself, a measure of the quality of a work of communication, but it is surely a measure of something:
Frodo Baggins vs Luke Skywalker:
This is just awesome - click to embiggen
- from XKCD
Really big version is here...
Hm: the Ents actually sort of show up indirectly in the Shire, so could have a thread going back to there.
No Tom Bombadil thread?
The darned "Army of the Dead" really does show up out of nowhere as a plot device.
Why couldn't Aragon have gone up North to recruit the Dwarves of Iron Hills, Men of Dale and Elves of the Wood, and Beorn and…
catdynamics | October 30, 2009Isis, our very own laboratory goddess, apparently knows the secret to hot and sexy science blogging.
We investigate.
Apparently it is all about leather, a shapely calf, and hot shoes - this will drive traffic up on the most boring sites
D00d!
I can totally do that.
Has it all.
Leather, shoe fetish, the pose.
If I don't at the very least out traffic PZ hisself this weekend, I will be very disappointed.
If that wasn't scary enough for you, I can always try the ScienceBlogs calendar for next year! (see Isis, above).
But I now know what we can challenge Chad to do for the next DonorChoose…
catdynamics | October 28, 2009another random walk through recent blog bits
JDEM Euclid er whatever they want to call the new joint mission is having a catfight ,
Nature News (sub) has the nasty details.
And for this they shot down LISA? A factor of two descoped, still overpriced mission?
JDEM's strength in the NAS review was that the 2m concept was TRL9+ - that something like it had already flown and costs were known.
So now they want to do a smaller less instrumented telescope for more cost. Pah.
Which reminds me, I need to cover HETDEX/BigBOSS concepts soon.
Has Fermi Seen New Evidence for Dark Matter.
No, probably…
catdynamics | October 28, 2009The governator writes a letter.
A manly man letter, not at all a girly man letter.
Hm, primitive steganography.
Read the first letter of each row.
Context from the SF Chronicle
Sounds like CA is getting even better than PA.
catdynamics | October 27, 2009my precious has returned from its mystery excursion
it vanished, my precious did, last friday
then, just as mysteriously, it reappeared today
like having a gnome it is
photos, I want photos
catdynamics | October 20, 2009Undecidable financial contracts, crowdsourcing nepotism and explaining the Nobel Prize.
We got it all...
Financial Derivatives - just intractable or formally undecidable?
- see comment by "Ken" at 20 Oct 09 11:39
yes, it looks like you can do arithmetic and boolean algebra with financial derivaties, and create undecidable statement.
Whose Kid Are You - ever wondered how your boss rose so quickly fromskipped the mailroom and took over?
The Y-Ranter is starting a crowdsourced "Whose Kid Are You" - a pedia of nepotism and backscratching.
Brilliant. I wonder if we can have one for Iceland.
With…
catdynamics | October 18, 2009An interesting paper just out, suggests that modern financial instruments are computationally intractable: specifically finding that inverting the synthesis of CDOs is equivalent to finding whether there is a dense subgraph of the CDO graph.
Thus figuring whether CDOs are manipulated to dump bad collateral selectively on a subset of buyers is probably NP hard!
Ouch.
Paper is "Computational Complexity and Information Asymmetry in Financial Products" by Arora, Barak, Brunnermeier and Ge (pdf)
Good discussion at Freedom to Tinker
If correct, then the current structure of Collateralized Debt…
catdynamics | October 15, 2009let it...
snow!
noon, 15th October 2009.
it is even sticking a bit, for now. More to come maybe.
PS: enough accumulation on elevated and "soft" surfaces to make, and throw, the first snowball of the season. Yay!
More snow expected, though I am skeptical of claims of accumulations of up to a foot over the weekend.
Roads are a mess - slush and wet leaves.
catdynamics | October 12, 2009We had one of these annoying small leaks from our washing machine.
It started late this summer, we noticed a small intermittent leak, from somewhere underneath the machine, but it wasn't reliably repeatable, but it was enough to be a concern, not to mention a possible harbinger of future trouble.
We could not find the problem. It is a relatively new and reliable machine, gets used a lot, sometimes multiple loads in a day. So, we called in the pros.
First repairman found nothing, and was rude about it.
Second repairman was much nicer, made several helpful suggestions and left the bill open,…
catdynamics | October 9, 2009"...to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses..."
I am in total awe of the Nobel Committee of the Norwegian Storting.
What I really want to know, is who took the phone call at the White House this morning?
Also, just how long does it take them to get a press release out on whitehouse.gov?
"For 108 years, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has sought to stimulate precisely that international policy and those attitudes for which Obama is now the…
catdynamics | September 29, 2009been a while
time for some assorted links
'cause y'know, linking is an intrinsic good
Robust Quantum Money - and who says theoretical physics is impractical?
A Small White Dot Gone
Oh, My Country - Iceland descends into a caricature of a bad joke about itself.
Told you, you should have thrown the bastard in the harbour while you were on a roll.
Decline of the Humanities - as long as we don't mention the percentages for maths and physical sciences...
Economists duel - but who will do the honourable thing?
Carnival of Space 120, 121, 122
Apparently, Obama is overly self-referential -
and…
rallain | September 29, 2009I was shocked. After installing Mac OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Tracker Video Analysis didn't work. This is one of my favorite programs for blogging.
It appears that the problem is with 32 bit Java vs. 64 bit. I don't really understand why one doesn't work, but Tracker doesn't work with 64 bit Java and that is now the default for 10.6 You can fix it. Go to Java Preferences.app (under applications/utilities) and drag 32-bit above 64 bit. It should look like this:
I had also installed QuickTime 7 (along with the newer QuickTime X) in the hopes that would fix the problem. I don't think you…
catdynamics | September 25, 2009there's something wrong, metaphorically, with this image...
city folk...
from Gorbachev's NYTOpEd on nuclear weapons
catdynamics | September 25, 2009Peace feels like "the kiss you get from your Mom before you get on the bus for school!"
Diddi (via Ms Hurtz)
It is that old "warrior poet" tradition...
Apparently it is a good way to get lots of kisses.
catdynamics | September 23, 2009H1N1 swine 'flu is coming home, and it is a big hit on campus.
With universities starting, and the weather cooling, the prospect for an early and nasty 'flu season was evident, and, amazingly, proactive measures were taken.
The first signs were the free, stand-alone, water free, hand sanitizer dispensers, appearing in high traffic and food areas.
Then came the Fast, Foamy and Furious!
- signs that is.
In the bathrooms.
Apparently the best way to get people to lather up and scrub is to convince them to sing "Happy Birthday". Twice. Quietly.
Annoyingly enough, this clearly works, since weeks…
rallain | September 21, 2009Thanks to all who participated in the Dot Physics Census. Let me share some of the things that I learned:
The survey was flawed. How dumb was I? Almost everyone would fit into more than one of those categories. Oh well.
Google Docs makes pretty good surveys. I made a form in google docs and embedded it in my webpage. The only thing that I didn't do (but I do know one way to do it) was to have live results. PollDaddy does this, but the free account is limited to 100 responses. I am too cheap for that.
I was surprised by the large percent of college students. College students, I…
catdynamics | September 19, 2009So, having established that Obama is NOT truly beholden to the financiers, what may happen to settle the financial world and straighten the economy.
No, really, he is not: no more than he is beholden to, say UC or Harvard.
I mean it is not like his administration is stuffed with academics from those venerable institutions... er, well, you know what I mean.
But, clearly, with his #1 contributor, UC, having been sorted, we now have a guide for what we may do about the financiers.
We furlough the banksters!
Brilliant!
Seriously.
Note that in academia, the furloughs increase as you go up the…