Wireless internet on trains and Linux

Listening to Morning Edition today, and I heard about a plan to put really fast Wi-Fi on the BART trains in San Francisco. It sounds really cool, and makes me really want: commuter trains in SE Michigan ... with Wi-Fi. But I digress (as per usual).

One of the limitations for the Wi-Fi system on commuter trains is the time it takes for people to get out their devices and boot them up (and the shut-down, put-away time, too) versus the amount of time that the commuter spends on the train. A solution offered on the show was the abilities of smart phones (like the iPhone) to link up to wireless networks, and remain virtually "always" on. One other solution, as I have been thinking about this, is to have a computer with a very fast boot-up time; one running some sort of Linux OS.

Perhaps the people working on a Linux OS in the Bay Area (or anywhere else that on-train Wi-Fi shows up) might use this as a selling point: a quick boot-up onto a Linux OS via USB or CD to allow for internet surfing on the train. I know already that many Linux OS can do the quick boot-up, but I think the major seller (at least in the Bay Area if BART Wi-Fi takes off) is the many benefits of using it on the train (fast boot-up, OS stability, low-level risk for viruses, etc), especially if someone out there makes an OS that is optimized to take advantage of the BART Wi-Fi system. And once a person is hooked on Linux due to using it on the twice-daily commute, the possibility of using Linux elsewhere - coffee shops, bookstores, in the park, etc. - increases.

Although the focus of the company interviewed on the show was in its installation of Wi-Fi on BART, the immediate connection I make with the concept of "commuter trains" out here (where there are none, really) is with AmTrak. Yes, they aren't really "commuter" trains anywhere, except in the northeast, but with increased ridership on AmTrak over the past number of  years, with the infrastructure already in place for plugging in computers, the number of potential customers on a single, multi-hour train ride is quite high. Whether the company interviewed on the show (or other companies) are already trying to ride the AmTrak wagon, I don't know, but when you have a captive audience which may well use your product sitting in place for several hours, I can't see any obvious reason not to try and capture them. ("Capture" a "captive" audience seems redundant, but what-the-hey.) Of course, as a pseudo-Federal organization/company, doing business with AmTrak may itself prove to have nightmares, but I would have to say that I would not mind in the slightest to being able to get online during the several-hour trips to Chicago and back again.

I'm not yet "Hooked on Linux", but part of that is due to a lack of need on my part - I have three computers at work, all of them maintained by highly competent IT staff - and a lack of compatibility with certain crucial software packages - ArcGIS, SPSS, HEC-RAS, etc. However, I've been looking to get a university-used laptop and use that one as my main "travel" computer, running Linux. (I'm really tempted by this option, especially when I know that DHS is searching - sometime siezing - people's computers at international borders. Having a fast boot-up second-hand refurbished Linux laptop will help with getting through customs, while also making a computer confiscation less painful - I hope - than losing my "main" laptop computer.)

Saw Wall-E

Yesterday, I went to see Wall-E with Kitchen Empress. I really liked it, and know that I will be purchasing it when it comes out on DVD. It did many things very well, including bringing the robots to life, creating a believable storyline, continuing with the marvelous tradition of Pixar animation, and just being really fun.

It had some elements of Short Circuit in it (and the little Wall-E unit even looks a little bit like Johnny-5). However, the storyline for Wall-E is (imho) much better, and the little 'droid is even more likable than the admittedly quite affable J-5. (Truth be told, I really felt that the flesh-and-blood actors didn't really help sell those two films...)

Happy Birthday, Orcboy!

Happy b-day Orcboy. May your campaigns be many, and your victories decisive!

Stupid signage

I saw this sign informing handicapped users that the handicap entrance can be found ... to the right of the door?For those of you not in the know, this is the southwest entrance to Angell Hall (this entrance is barely visible in the linked picture, but you can see it peeking out about one inch from left-of-center, assuming that your screen's resolution is the same as mine - which in all likelihood it isn't). The handicapped entrance is on the northwest side, which is in the analogous position as this one, but all the way past and around the large classical architecture stairs-and-columns that mark the U's only pseudo-classical building.

Now, it wouldn't be so bad if but there were a sign or map informing someone in a wheelchair where they have to go, instead of indicating that they "enfenestrate" themselves through the window.

I am Yin-Yang

Based on a five-question online quiz, I am apparently quite the balanced individual.

Here's the verdict:

Are you yin or yang?
My result is: Yin-Yang
Managing the best of both worlds you try to keep an open mind to most things. You have a perfect balance.

Now, everybody repeat after me:

"Ohm...."

Something amazing happens on the 4th of July

Via Physorg:

News Flash: On 4th of July weekend, NASA forecasts lights in the sky.
No, not those lights. Look beyond the fireworks. Almost halfway up the
western sky, just above the twilight glow of sunset, a trio of worlds
is gathering: Saturn, Mars and the crescent Moon.

Well, it won't be as interesting for those of us without telescopes or with too much glare or clouds. Apparently, NASA has forecast a planetary syzygy occurring between Mars, Saturn, and the star Regulus on July 4. On July 5 (my birthday), the crescent moon comes into alignment with the other three.

However, being in Ann Arbor, I doubt that I will be able to see any of this - too much light, too great a possibility for cloud cover, and too many trees.

Half way through 2008

Since 2008 is a leap year, there are 366 days this year. That means that half of the year will have gone by at midnight on day 184. July 1 is day 183. (Also a White Rabbit day, and Canada Day!)

You made it through half of this year. Only half of it to go before the start of 2009!

Japanese Rube Goldberg machines

Ahh, those wacky Japanese and their Goldberg machines. Check them out. Really engrossing...

A collection of short RGMs:


A really long RGM using several different forms of energy:

Ahh, accents and the world of understanding located between our ears.

"What?"


That short film reminded me of some YouTube videos I stumbled across last year about how language and culture intersect in humorous ways. Enjoy.

"Subtitles"


"Do you speak English?"

White Rabbit

Gotcha!

June Photos

Sunset on Zingerman's Deli

Maintenance work being done on Martha Cook Hall

The charred remains of Delta Upsilon after the June 2 fire.

Just another Saturday morning at the Ann Arbor Farmers' Market.

Continued build of North Quad, as seen from MLB (Romance Languages)

Credo of those with strong convictions

"Judge those who you think might judge you.
Hold preconceptions that you know have worked.
People are dumb, except for those that aren’t.
Don't restrict civil liberties, except when people are dumb.
Things are never black-and-white, except when they are.
It’s okay to kill people, except when they were not meant to die.
Stereotype all the time.
Remember that I’m the victim here!"

Why computer system updates are annoying

Yesterday, I learned that I didn't have enough funds in my checking account (poor grad student as I am) to cover a small purchase, something that I knew shouldn't have happened, since I was supposed to be paid the previous week. However, I went online, checked my balance and account activity, and low-and-behold, I was overdrawn. Arse.

So this morning I called university payroll. I spoke to a very nice woman there who politely informed me that I wasn't hired. Hm! "Well..." I told her, "I'm pretty sure that I put in hours, filled in a time-sheet, and handed it in to the appropriate person in my department." However, that attempt was only met with the same polite information that my bi-weekly payments authorization was not in the system, and suggest that I call my department's HR person.

So I call my department's HR person, who is a lovely individual. She informs me that, no, I couldn't be hired yet, as I had not completed the "student employment application" on the new and improved student interface. Shit. The university's upgrading their system, and they can't "remember":

• that I am eligible to work in the United States
• that I'm not a felon
• what my prior non-university employment was
• whether I have family employed at the university, and
• that I understand that I cannot profit privately from public research funds.

Well, I had to sign off on all of these things before. For five years. Why is it different now? What part of a W-4 tax form makes it obscure whether I'm eligible to work in the US? What part of the university's own employment form's section on prior felonies makes it unclear that I'm not a felon? Why isn't their database strong enough for it to figure out on its own whether I have family working at the University? (I'm pretty sure that they don't count anything beyond a first cousin.)

All because of four little questions that someone decided weren't important enough to 'port over from the previous databases did I not get my direct deposit, forcing me into negativity (financial and emotional). Why am I not surprised?

What really gets my goat, though, is that I had been working continuously for over one year! Yeah! I know. Apparently, the university's main HR database doesn't know that I'm working presently for it and getting paid. (Talk about the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing!) Sheesh!

Of course, I could be kvetching (hey! Firefox's spell-check includes the word 'kvetching'!) about nothing. These sorts of things may well be greater nightmares in other universities, in government, or in the private sector. Of course, not having worked through another system's overhaul, I'm in no place to say, and I'm merely disgruntled about the stupid shift over.

On the plus side, the interface is much cleaner, the graphics are nicer, and there are more pieces of information that can be accessed. (Previously, you might have to drill down through several different menus to find the one you were looking for.)

Therefore, this is the moral: When there's a system overhaul, immediately figure out how it affects you and seek to rectify the situation as soon as possible.

UPDATE 2008/06/25: I talked with the manager of my bank's local branch (where I set up my account). I showed him the university's pay calendar, explained the situation, and showed him the e-mail I received from my department's HR person stating that I can pick up my paycheck from payroll tomorrow. He kindly waived my overdraft fee. YAY!

UPDATE 2008/06/26: I went down to payroll myself to pick up a check they issued off-cycle. Although I had to take a 10-minute bus ride down there, wait 10 minutes for another bus after picking up my check, and ride the bus 10 minutes back to campus before cycling to my bank to make a deposit, it was very nice to spend almost an hour in order to get money in my account.

Assistance to quit smoking in Scotland: a tangential analysis

From today's PhysOrg:

The pilot scheme to be tried in Dundee, north of Edinburgh, will see smokers offered 12.50 pounds (15.8 euros, 24.7 dollars) per week to quit. Health bosses hope that 900 smokers will give up as a result in the next two years.

This program is based on an apparently successful previous program called: Give it up for baby. As of the end of September 2007 thirty-one women were recruited in the program, with a 95% pass rate based on weekly carbon monoxide breath tests. From the December 10, 2007 progress report for the program:

The scheme has paid £1,760 to the women as credits to be claimed against fresh food and groceries at ASDA. The first birth of an infant under the scheme has taken place, with both the mother and father having given up smoking.
...
No significant operational issues have affected the provision of the scheme. No significant risk issues have been identified.

I've not found more recent results, but it seems that things are going well. However, a basic economic analysis of future cost-savings would be useful. However, I've not found any such analysis in the summary, so I decided to do really basic back-of-the-envelope calculations to see what sort of benefit the "Give it up for baby" scheme might have. First, I had to find out what sort of things the British press reports, viz health risks caused by smoking during pregnancy in the UK.

From The Independent (March 2, 2002):

Pregnant smokers are a further cause for concern, with higher risks of miscarriage, reduced birthweight, and perinatal death. For parents who continue to smoke after birth, there is an increased risk of cot death and the children themselves are more likely to take it up. The highest smoking rates found among expectant mothers are closely related to health inequalities.
...
Pregnant women who smoke are a key focus of action as smoking cessation services are developed. The Government's latest infant feeding survey figures show a 5 per cent drop in the number of pregnant women smoking since 1995, and pounds 3m has been invested in training and appointing midwives to co-ordinate antenatal and postnatal smoking cessation services, giving specialist advice. A new national NHS helpline for pregnant smokers wishing to quit has also been set up.

Areas of cost savings for the woman include cigarettes at roughly ~£490 (based on a median cigarette usage over a 280-day pregnancy of 7 cigarettes/day, 20 cigarettes/pack, and a cost of £5/pack*), for a low birth-weight baby £50,000 (based on a low value of $100,000 in the United States in 2000 dollars and exchange rate of £1=$2), and funeral costs due to perinatal death £2,048 (based on median British funeral cost) give an estimated (low) cost savings to the mother of £52,538. This doesn't even cover the costs of possible counseling and ancillary costs due to lost time at work, for example. Admittedly, I would imagine that the NHS would cover some (or a lot) of the £50,000 I'm listing as care for a low birth-weight baby, but even if it is covered by a negligible co-pay, the direct costs are still high.

In 1998, the British government released a report stating that smoking costs the NHS £1.4 billion each year. If we assume that the NHS picks up the majority of the bill for the estimated £50,000 listed above, then even for the small sample size of this program (31 women), the NHS saves a possible £1.55 million at the expenditure of only a few thousand pounds. If this was expanded to the rest of Scotland, the NHS may well see large-scale results.

The figure of £1.4 billion provides a scale of how much cost-savings the NHS would see if the Scottish scheme a) worked, and b) was used throughout the country. Already, the UK has mandated a smoking ban in all public buildings throughout the country (including pubs, mind). Of course, after the UK gains the benefits of cost-abatement due to a more healthy society, it will inevitably have to deal with the costs of a society that has lived longer than previously would have - increased costs for senior living...

* The NHS has a nifty little Flash applet on personal costs of cigarettes.

George Carlin is dead

George Carlin is dead at 71 from "heart failure." Unfortunately, due to his freedom-of-speech, and anti-religious bigotry routines against profanity decisions have put him on a hit-list of certain cretins in the "moral leagues" of this country.

Although I could post some of his stand-up here, I'm not going to do so, because any one stand-up routine that I post might be pulled for various reasons (copyright, obscenity, etc.). However, I'll link to YouTube's search results for 'George Carlin'.

The world will be a paler place until the next social commentator steps into the breach. George, you'll be missed, since you never seemed to sink into the intolerant form of vitriol that those who support religio-dogmatism and censored speech.

China #1 in CO2

From PhysOrg:

With an eight percent national increase, China's carbon dioxide emissions contributed the bulk of last year's 3.1 percent global rise in CO2 emissions, according to a statement released on the last day of a United Nations conference on climate change in Bonn, Germany.

"With this, China tops the list of CO2 emitting countries, having about a quarter share in global CO2 emissions (24 percent)," it said.

The United States was second with 21 percent, while the European Union was at 12 percent, India eight percent and Russia six percent, said the statement.

Cement clinker production was a major cause of the emissions, and with an increase of 10 percent in 2007 China now accounted for about 51 percent of global cement production, said the PBL.

"After the earthquake which recently hit the Sichuan province, it may be expected that the rebuilding of houses and roads for over five million people will cause the cement demand to soar even further," it said.

Warmer winter weather and high fuel prices contributed to a two percent drop in CO2 emissions in Europe last year, it added.

But in the US, a cold winter and warm summer contributed to rising carbon emissions from heating and cooling functions. Overall in the US last year, CO2 emissions rose by 1.8 percent.

"Since population size and level of economic development differ considerably between countries, the emissions expressed per person show a largely different ranking," added the agency.

The US topped the list of C02 emissions per person measured in metric tonnes with 19.4, followed by Russia with 11.8, the EU with 8.6, China with 5.1 and India with 1.8.

The figures were compiled from recently published British Petroleum energy data and cement production data for 2007.

In the current global warming talks, the US and other Western nations have balked at making mandatory cuts in greenhouse gases as developing nations like China are not required to slash emissions under the UN climate change framework.

This might not be such a great time to harp on about this (again), but one wonders how this will impact the Olympic games (since much of China's energy production is via coal).

Thunderf00t, VenomFangX, and false arguments

For those of you not "in the know", Thunderf00t and VenomFangX are both Youtube posters who oppose each other's viewpoint on whether the science of evolution describes the myriad of life we see today or if that myriad was specially created by the Christian God. Based on some videos previously posted here, you might guess which one I agree with.

However, on one of the latest (not the greatest, but rather humorous) rebuttals posted by Thunderf00t (which apparently got pulled sometime between 12:15pm and 1:15pm), I saw this humorous message (complete with mis-spellings) posted by ooglebydoogleby:

ime convinced where do i sign up to have my brain removed and a blomonge inseted with a jelly crusifix internal moulding. venom= the snake in the garden. fang= for another negative god. and the x= the the cross of christianity turned 1/8 at 45 degrees 8x45=360 which added to the five days of satanic festivals that the pagans marked the begining of the new year with = one year, 5 representing the devils dominium over the four spacial direction nth sth east and wst the fifth being time. ooohhh..

"Ooohhh.." indeed. The context within which the statement was written makes it even more funny:

VenomFangX "proves" the existence of God (once again) by showing that God knew the "exact diameter of the moon" in miles, as evidenced in the Gospel of Joshua, chapter 6. His "logic" in the video goes something like this:

6 days of marching around the city of Jericho (360 degrees) = 2160

2160 miles = "the exact diameter of moon" in miles

Based on his convoluted argument, VenomFangX twists logic in a way that only the best Bible Coders do to show that "A proves B because of something I make up based on numbers in the Bible." To that end, the statement by ooglebydoogleby is quite (at least to me) funny.

VenomFangX's argument is - of course - a false one, since it is an argument the begs the question. (i.e., God is omniscient and omnipotent. There is evidence that God knew something before man did. Therefore I can prove God's existence through his omniscience.) However, regardless of the fact that this is a false argument, VenomFangX makes several mistakes.

1. The passage of Joshua 6 is actually:

6 So Joshua son of Nun called the priests and said to them, "Take up the ark of the covenant of the LORD and have seven priests carry trumpets in front of it."

There is a mention of seven priests, and no mention of circling the city, nor of the number of times these priests were to circle it. Looking back at Joshua 1-5, though, one sees:

1 Now Jericho was tightly shut up because of the Israelites. No one went out and no one came in.

2 Then the LORD said to Joshua, "See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands, along with its king and its fighting men. 3 March around the city once with all the armed men. Do this for six days. 4 Have seven priests carry trumpets of rams' horns in front of the ark. On the seventh day, march around the city seven times, with the priests blowing the trumpets. 5 When you hear them sound a long blast on the trumpets, have all the people give a loud shout; then the wall of the city will collapse and the people will go up, every man straight in."

VenomFangX obviously needs to look at his Bible reference again, since it isn't Joshua 6, but Joshua 3 where the statement of marching around the city six times comes into play.

2. VenomFangX appears to place a lot of emphasis on his Bible Coding on Joshua 3, leading up to the what happens on the seventh day (remember that the number "7" has mystical significance in Judaism and Christianity). On the seventh day, the seven priests are supposed to march around the city seven times. This is significant. This is what the whole thing is leading up to. Not including this would be tantamount to heresy! If VenomFangX took this into account as well - as opposed to doing Bible Code searching - then you get the following:

7 priests (6 days * 360 degrees + 7 * 360 degrees)
= 7 (2160 + 2520)
= 7 (4860)
= 34020

As everyone knows, 34020 - while being a really large number - was the code given to the second generation of the TMS integrated circuit, as well as being the code for an image of City Hall Staton on the NY subway system. This proves God exists, since - in his omniscience - he was able to forsee integrated circuits as well as underground public transportation and centralized metropolitan goverment!

Okay, okay, that's a stretch. Maybe I shouldn't have included the 7 priests in the above equation. If I don't include them, then the resulting number is 4860. Consulting the Oracle at Google, one can find that this is the NIH code for the human gene nucleoside phosphorylase, which:

Encodes "an enzyme which reversibly catalyzes the phosphorolysis of purine nucleosides. The enzyme is trimeric, containing three identical subunits. Mutations which result in nucleoside phosphorylase deficiency result in defective T-cell (cell-mediated) immunity but can also affect B-cell immunity and antibody responses. Neurologic disorders may also be apparent in patients with immune defects. A known polymorphism at aa position 51 that does not affect enzyme activity has been described. A pseudogene has been identified on chromosome 2.

This proves God's existence because only through his omniscience would he have known about the creation of the National Institutes of Health and the funding of the Human Genome Project. Only he - in his eternal wisdom - would have encoded such a message in the form of a Bible dictum with no clue as to the means of mathematically extracting the information that would lead people to understand his true meaning. I see, however, that by hiding the number 4860 within his devising of a scheme by which Joshua could knock down the walls of Jericho, God was seeing a greater picture because he correlates the knocking down of the walls of Jericho with the knocking down of the mystery of the human genome! Wow!

Oh, wait. Maybe not. Maybe I've got the whole mathematical operation wrong. Maybe I'm supposed to add the values together (7 priests + 7 days + 13 times around the city = 27). And everyone knows that 27 is the product of 3 * 9, and when you add 3 + 9, you get 12, the number of Disciples! That is what the story of Jericho was really foretelling - the coming of Jesus Christ!

3. The diameter of the moon is not "exactly" 2160 miles. It's approximately that amount at the moon's equator. Between the moon's poles, the diameter is approximately 2157 miles. The average diameter of the moon is approximately 2159 miles. I'm sure that if one looked at the infinite number of different diameters one could draw through the moon, one might find something that was "exactly" 2160.0 miles. If God was omniscient and omnipotent, then wouldn't he have created a moon that was an exact sphere of 2160 miles? (Or is polar flattening and meteor impacts the work of the devil?)

4. The "mile" was not fully standardized until 1959! Below are some conversions of the equitorial lunar diameter into different miles (conversions done using onlineconversion.com, with the value of 3476.28 km):

• 2497.32 Spanish miles
• 2287.03 Ancient Roman miles
• 2160.52 Ancient British miles
• 2160.05 US survey miles
• 1916.36 Scottish miles
• 1875.84 UK nautical miles
• 1877.04 International nautical miles
• 1783.62 French miles
• 1697.40 Irish miles
• 1665.44 Portuguese miles
• 463.50 Danish miles
• 325.28 Ancient Swedish miles

People, this is one of the reasons why much of the world uses kilometers, and not miles. The fact that the moon is approximately 2160 US miles does little to show God's existence. It would have been much more conclusive if there was a Hebrew unit of length that somehow linked closely with the diameter of the moon - in this case. However, Hebrew units of length were not standardized. Therefore, a measurement in ells would be different for each person making that measurement, to such a degree that the "diameter-of-the-moon" argument that VenomFangX makes above would be covered within that really large spread of human-to-human error.

Sensible Units

Ever want to know how to convert between different types of units? Well, one can look up unit conversions on a table (so old school), or online at Online Conversion for a very extensive selection of conversion options.

For example: 

1 foot = 0.16666 fathom = 0.3048 meter.

Of course, there are some things that you need to convert that don't have constant conversion rates, such as currency. If you want to convert US Dollars into Canadian Dollars (or Australian Dollars or any other type of dollar), what would be a fair conversion rate? Well, a great online tool for this kind of unit conversion is XE.com (which even allows you to look at historic currency conversion rates - limited to 20 years of data - and a whole bunch of handy currency conversion tools besides).

For example:

 USD 1 = CAD 1.0050905404 on June 3, 2008

USD 1 = CAD 1.4530000000 on June 3, 1998

Of course, with the wonders of the internets, I find "SensibleUnits" - a place where you can convert standard units to "sensible" units.

For example: 

1 foot = 6.0 AA batteries end-to-end = 30 stacked CD cases

UPDATE (2010-03-29): The "SensibleUnits" website is no longer functional. Kinda sad, since I was just wondering how many Great Walls of China long the Mississippi River is.

May Photos

CC Little Building, facing North University Ave.

Mural in alleyway between Liberty St. and Washington St., across from the Federal Bldg.

Demolition of the old YMCA

Alleyways behind the Michigan Theater

Maintaining the Burton Tower

Ann Arbor Railroad bridge over Main St and the Huron River

Across from the Argus Bldg on 4th St.

An old train station of the Ann Arbor Railroad (near 1st and William)

Rather presumptuous advert

Sylvania ad from SE Asia

I really like this commercial, since it shows off a panoply of "boogie-monsters" of SE Asia. (The transvestite comment is a little odd, though.)

Man jailed for riding skateboard to work

From Treehugger:

Lee Breen lives green; his day job is running a landscaping company that uses push mowers, hand clippers and organic compost. He says that the City of Fredricton, (New Brunswick, Canada) should be encouraging non-polluting forms of transportation. But even though he was skating at the edge of the road, wearing a helmet and actually using hand signals, he was arrested last summer for breaching a local bylaw that prohibits the use of "a sled, toboggan, wagon or skateboard on the streets of New Brunswick's capital."

So... rollerblading, rollerskating, rollerskiing, powerbocking, stilt-walking, "magic-wheel"-ing, unicycling, cargo-biking, mono-wheeling, kick- or motor-scootering, etc. along the side of the road are all fine? Most of these forms of transportation create just as small a profile as a skateboarder. Some of them are less stable, to boot!

The issue of skateboard bans has - I believe - nothing to do with public safety, but rather a perception of a public nuisance. Using a skateboard on the sidewalk can easily become a nuisance - both to the boarder and to pedestrians - much like using a bike or being a jogger (or any of the above-listed alternative modes of transport), since it operates at a speed that is an order of magnitude faster than walkers.

Finally, I feel that a ban on using a skateboard as a mode of transportation is about as dumb as banning the use of personal re-usable bags at a store as a means of goods-schlepping.

Natural disasters and the mandate of heaven

Another side of why the Chinese government may be so interested that the their people take note of their efforts to save and help so many civilians after the large earthquake may be due to the Mandate of Heaven. There have been several stories about this on the blogosphere, but I think Salon.com might have a good summary.

Although 2008 is only 5.5 months in, China has suffered two major natural disasters: snow and earthquake. In January was the worst snows in decades, stopping millions of Chinese from going home to the countryside for Lunar New Year celebrations. It was cited at that time - what with the Prime Minister apologizing for the weather delays - that many people in the politburo were worried about the perception of a loss of this heavenly "mandate" for their party - their "dynasty" - to continue their rule.

Now, at the start of May, China has suffered a major earthquake, with tens-of-thousands of people dead, and possibly thousands more deaths to become confirmed.

The strength of this notion of the "Mandate of Heaven" might be stronger than some people in the West might think. After all, China is seen to be a "godless" Communist country. We know that the central government has recently made such outrageous statements as to regulating reincarnation (!) and enforce religious laws allowing only adults to practice any religion. We know that China is also a growing area of science. We tend to imprint our own viewpoints upon those pieces of evidence we see and draw conclusions based on our own world views and upbringing. However, China is not totally within our paradigm. Just as anyone in the West has to deal with a society constructed around the notion that "religion = Christianity", in a similar way the Chinese have to deal with "rulership = Mandate of Heaven". (I would forward the notion that minus a democratic system of power being vested in government by the free will of the people - which the current government is - then the possibility of hanging on to the notion of the heavens holding the mandate of rule is a pretty appealing one.) Therefore, it shouldn't be much of a surprise that since we find that religiosity in China is alive-and-well, so, too, will come the understanding that the Chinese government may be very determined to show the country that they are working for the people (especially when much of the stated religiosity shows up as "Fortune" and "Fate" - aspects governing the Mandate of Heaven).

True, the country is also putting on a show for the rest of the world. Now, I'm not saying that this is a "show" in the sense of a "dog-and-pony show", but there is an understanding that the world is watching the country. What with the Olympics coming, China has put itself (semi-voluntarily) on the world's stage for scrutiny. With this natural disaster, it has only itself to blame if relief is not given in a timely manner. Indeed, one has not heard China asking the world for relief aid, and so one might think that there is also a bit of the "we're part of the developed world" attitude being displayed. (Of course, the contrary point-of-view is that the Chinese government has trepidations of allowing thousands of foreign relief aid workers throughout the country.)

Finally, there is the "Tibet problem". Although China has recently stated that it will meet with a representative of the Dalai Lama, I'm sure that it can now use the recent earthquake - and their helping of the Chinese people - as a convenient excuse to stop talks. We shall see what happens in the next few days, I suppose.

Perhaps if there is another set of natural disasters, the country will have to take more and more seriously the inequalities of the richer Eastern coastal area versus the relatively poorer and rural vast remainder of the country. A poor way of obtaining rights and governmental benefits, to be sure, but when there is no democratic oversight, nor fair representation for the countryside, to whom else but the heavens can people turn?

Squirrel: it's what's for dinner (in Britain)

Ahh, the wonders of British cuisine never cease to amaze me. From The Guardian:

It's low in fat, low in food miles and completely free range. In fact, some claim that Sciurus carolinensis - the grey squirrel - is about as ethical a dish as it is possible to serve on a dinner plate.

Mmmm... Where can I sign me up for some squirrel meat?

Now, the idea of eating squirrel is not that new, but where can I get some recipes? A quick search on the Google of "squirrel recipe" led me to:

• Backwoods Bound - where you can find squirrel in many things, including cream sauce.
• Bow Hunting - where John "aka Grey Beard" had a recipe for squirrel stew.

But looking down the list, I started to see a pattern emerging: the popular squirrel recipes were only on the hunter-type websites. If the UK government is going to support the sale of these wee beasties as food products, then it had best try and come up with some good recipes for them.

"Please sir, can I have some more?"

Now, in all seriousness, the reason why so many grey squirrels are being hunted is due to their being so bloody aggressive in the wilds (and not-so-wilds) of Britain, beating up on their hapless red squirrel cousins. To that end, the Brits have decided to allow target practice to commence upon the grey squirrel.

I wonder what Michigan Squirrels Club would have to say about it? (I think I might offer them some squirrel-on-a-stick come next year...)

Target: Women ... Yogurt Edition

"Ooh Girl!" - An Honest R&B song

April Photos

Close-up of Rackham

School of Public Health
Buildings One, Three (and Two)

City Hall cows

Diag covered for graduation ceremony (they put chairs out)

Behind a massive LCD monitor array set up for 2008 Graduation

One problem of listening to too much news

No, I'm actually not going to focus on the problem of becoming too depressed from listening to the news. This one is more insidious, but might well be only an issue for me: writer's block.

I don't know why it happens, but I become more "verbose" in my writing when I'm not listening to so much radio or television news (I don't always watch the screen when the news is on - it doesn't always add that much more to the discussion of events). This being National Poetry Month, I had thought to myself, "Self, why not put together a poem or two? You know, something to do with wind, sky, air, water, spring, life, etc.?" Well, it is now the last day in April, and I just realized that the implication of that was that I had not composed a single poem for this month. True, I did post one poem, but that was one I found online.

So what should I write about now that the end of the month is so near? Should I not worry, and try and throw something together really quickly? Should I be angst-ridden and worry over each line? How does this all relate to writer's block (and should that be the subject of my poem)?

Well, to answer the last (non-parenthetical) question first. I have found that I've been suffering from a massive case of writer's block. I've also realized that I have these when I am listening to a lot of NPR and watching a lot of BBC. I've just now turned off the Beeb and am listening to the flowing water of my housemate's large fish tank. The sun is setting, and the light is shafting in through the front-door window. I'm sitting, thinking about going out in an hour to Leopold Bros - getting in a last couple of visits before they up-and-go to Denver, CO.

So, here's my thrown-together, semi-thought-through poem:

The end of this month arrived so fast.
Through many weeks of work and celebration,
It sneaked up on me.

The end of this month looms ahead.
And I realize now, with a warm setting sun,
It will slip softly by.

The end of this month is so easy to see.
A campus devoid of stressed scholar-students,
Lies recovering in the sun.

The end of April, the cruelest month,
Will flow out with a soft, cool, breeze;
A sylph's caress upon the brow of Time.

Anticipate May.
May Day through and past Memorial Day.
Sunny, warm, and May.

Last.fm

Just started out with Last.fm. So far, so good. However, with such an eclectic taste in music, I wonder who will be classified as "neighbors" for me. I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

Today in history: Fuehrerstodestag!

On this day in 1945, ten days after his fifty-sixth birthday, Adolf Hitler killed himself and his wife of one day - Eva Braun - in his Berlin bunker as Soviet soldiers raised the flag of the USSR over the Reichstag. The end of the nightmare leading up to and through WWII was soon about to be over. (The Third Reich - what Hitler claimed to be a "Tausendjähriges Reich" - would finally crumble completely on May 8.)

Hat tip to Respectful Insolence.

The Old Red Gown

The mist hangs round the College tower,
The ghostly street
Is silent at this midnight hour,
Save for my feet.

With none to see, with none to hear,
Downward I go
To where, beside the rugged pier,
The sea sings low.

It sings a tune well loved and known
In days gone by,
When often here, and not alone,
I watched the sky.

That was a barren time at best,
It's fruits were few;
But fruits and flowers had keener zest
And fresher hue.

Life has not since been wholly vain,
And now I bear
Of wisdom plucked from joy and pain
Some slender share.

But, howsoever rich the store,
I'd lay it down,
To feel upon my back once more,
The old red gown.

R.F.Murray
1863-1893

The poem was about my alma mater, St. Andrews University, in St. Andrews, Scotland.

Pray-in to solve gasoline prices?

Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars wrote a blurb about this amazing story of illogic running (near) rampant in San Francisco:

Pray-in at S.F. gas station asks God to lower prices

Rocky Twyman has a radical solution for surging gasoline prices: prayer.

Twyman - a community organizer, church choir director and public relations consultant from the Washington, D.C., suburbs - staged a pray-in at a San Francisco Chevron station on Friday, asking God for cheaper gas. He did the same thing in the nation's Capitol on Wednesday, with volunteers from a soup kitchen joining in. Today he will lead members of an Oakland church in prayer.

Yes, it's come to that.

"God is the only one we can turn to at this point," said Twyman, 59. "Our leaders don't seem to be able to do anything about it. The prices keep soaring and soaring.

Ummm... What? Come again?

"Our leaders" (well, our CiC and his [Good 'ole Boy] Party) seem unwilling to do anything about it. The President doesn't want to take action, his appointee in the EPA is dragging his agency's feet on monitoring CO2 as a pollutant, and the administration doesn't want to allow California (and 17 other states) to strengthen Clean Air Act requirements (which CA is allowed to do under the CAA). All of this, even though the Supreme Court made a decision last year that CO2 was not exempt from pollution monitoring.

Okay, so this isn't only about climate change/global warming. This is a discussion about the price of gasoline, and it's recent meteoric rise (see left). However, if Twyman wanted to make some real impact, maybe he should talk with Gordon Brown to have him work more closely with the strikers at Grangemouth. I mean, now that they are striking, the price of gas has increased past £5 per gallon (roughly $10/gallon)! If there isn't a strong argument for a cause-and-effect relationship between a human action (union strike) and the price of a human-manufactured commodity (petroleum), I don't know what is.

Of course, Twyman could have exhorted activists to talk with Chevron - make the oil company responsible for human life (something that Xtians always seem to point to in their vaunted morals) caused by extraction. If Chevron (and other oil/gas companies) didn't pay so much for their lawyers and public relations firms, possibly the price of gas might be a little less. And if not, then it would at least be easier to bend over and take it at the pump, knowing that - at least - the company reaming us (thanks to a myopic, all-eggs-in-one-basket method of automotive technology development and synergistic urban planning trajectory over the past several decades) is socially aware, and not merely spreading poverty and multi-generational toxic health hazards to poor parts of the world for the benefit of our modality of life. (I'm sorry, am I coming across a little strong there?)

But this isn't a single-sector, single-nation issue, right? Maybe the whole thing is too big for one person to do anything about. Well, instead of praying that gasoline prices drop, Twyman could pray that people change their actions to bring about a change in the gasoline price. Or Twyman could tell people petition their government (a very constitutional thing to do) to provide incentives for people to purchase urban-friendly electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles; cities to increase the number of bicycle-friendly bike lanes and bike parking; invest in public transportation; etc. In other words, provide real alternative options for people to solve their transportation problems. Gasoline prices might well be less of an issue once the need for it is diminished.

Ahcuah (one of the commenters of Ed's post) made the comparison between Twyman's call-to-prayer with Georgia's Gov. Sonny Perdue's call-to-prayer for rain (much more of a traditional reason to pray - harkening back to times when people beseeched a divine Otherness (deity, nature spirit, ancestors, etc.) to provide something over which the supplicant had no control). The governor's prayer for rain seems to have had rather ... 'parched' results (see right). Although I can see the comparison between the two, I don't think it really is an apples-to-apples comparison. Gov. Perdue's prayer is for something outside the 'human-realm'; over which we have little actual control. On the other hand, Twyman's is for something that is entirely in the 'human-realm' of possible action. Twyman's actions are akin to praying for lower medical costs (a 'human-realm' issue) because our government leaders can't reach a compromise on how to tackle the problem of national health insurance (something that will have an effect on the 'human-realm' of issues).

Of course, people are allowed to pray for anything they want (far be it for me to dictate what people should and shouldn't pray for), and prayers for world peace are made every day. However, prayer by itself is not as effective as prayer followed by constructive action. It's for this last reason (the disconnect between what we may wish - and therefore pray - and those things that we can actually act on - and maybe pray for the conviction or endurance to pursue) that I'm most peeved with this story.

Final thought: maybe this was prayer motivated by feelings of frustration with the government. Maybe this is equivalent to the "clinging to guns and religion" we heard so much negative press about. If this is the case, then perhaps Obama had it right, after all. (I'm convinced he did, but that's just one small voice, and what does one small voice know about anything?)

Graduation and a bunch of celebrations

The end of this Winter 08 semester has been - for me - somewhat hectic. (Admittedly by being social with people who will be soon leaving the nice safe confines of academia to enter into the real world.)

4/15: A colleague's birthday celebrations at Cafe Habana, followed by post-M.S. project presentation celebrations at Grizzly Peak, then followed by celebrations at Bab's Underground.
4/16: SNRE Spring Picnic in the Nichols Arboretum, followed by socializing at the wondrous (although slightly expensive) Dominick's. (This time, however, someone got bad pizza... Boo.)
4/17: Fundraising event for Environmental Justice track, held at the Elks lodge.
4/18: Celebration of a friends successful dissertation defense, held at Dominick's.
4/19: A [belated] birthday celebration of a graduating department colleague at Pub 13 in Ypsilanti.
4/20: Ushering at the Dalai Lama's visit to Ann Arbor from 7AM - 4:30 PM. Crashed after getting home; slept 14 hours.
4/21: Rest.
4/22: Rest.
4/23: "GreenDrinks"/Net-impact networking event at the Arbor Brewing Company, followed by a colleague's birthday celebrations at Conor O'Neil's.
4/24: Rest.
4/25: GEO BBQ in celebration of the new contracts (and the great efforts of the bargaining team).
4/26: SNRE graduation ceremonies. (I skipped out on the general graduation ceremony on the Diag, even though it was converted to accommodate several thousand seats.)
4/27: BBQ to celebrate the graduation of a friend from the IPCAA program (that's the Classical Archaeology dept for those of you not in the know).

Now is Monday, and the Diag is having its coverings removed. Hopefully, all will be back to summer-time normalcy by tomorrow. (Although I think that is being unreasonably hopeful.)

I step in on the topic of the Olympic torch protests

Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars:

I've been watching the protests around the world as the Olympic torch makes its way toward China. My thoughts are this. First of all, I don't think the US should boycott the Olympics. I think that was a mistake in 1980 and I think it would be a mistake now. All that does is deprive hundreds of American athletes of a lifelong dream they've worked endless hours for (my friend Vinx had his dream destroyed in 1980 when he was on the Olympic team in the triple jump). And it doesn't do anything positive to make up for that.

But having said that, I'm happy to see these protests going on and I'm particularly happy to see them happening in so many different nations. I think that's very hopeful. I am always glad to see large groups of people stand up against oppression. Liberty lives first in our minds and when we casually accept its destruction for others, we let that flame burn out. So I hope the protests continue. It may not change the Chinese government, but it's still sending a strong message against tyranny.

Did anyone hear or read the recent statements made by the governor of Tibet?

Via The Press Association:

Champa Phuntsok, the Chinese-appointed head of the Tibetan Autonomous Region, said he believes supporters of the Dalai Lama, who Beijing has accused of instigating last month's unrest, will seek to use the Olympics to publicise their cause.

...

Champa Phuntsok pledged that the relay will be "completely successful and safe" in Tibet, adding that authorities have made special security preparations.

"During the torch relay in Tibet and in climbing Mount Everest, if anyone should attempt to disrupt or undermine the torch relay, then they will be dealt with severely according to the law," he said.

This seems - if it were made by a governor of a province/state in a Western country - a ludicrous position. You are the governor of a province that has - for better or worse - a romantic place in the hearts of many Americans and Europeans. It is presently in a state of [controlled] upheaval; protests by the native people against what they still consider as a foreign occupier. The national regular military has already been sent in to quell the worst of the rioting. (Which would cause a massive uproar if something similar was tried in the United States with the regular military.) Why are you blaming the very internationally popular and charismatic exiled and politically powerless leader of the country that is now your province, as well as threaten anyone in your province who is exercising what many people in the Western world (who generally follow a similar model of human rights) consider their right to free speech with a crack-down which may well again involve the use of military force? One obvious reason is that you don't see it the way one might in the West.

Two nights ago on the 10PM EST news show BBC World News America, the commentator said that China was more interested in national security than on its international reputation. This was the main reason that no one in the government would ever talk with the Dalai Lama - doing so would be seen as talking with an illegitimate head-of-state, and a concession of some sort of legitimacy. I suppose the fear is that the unpopular imposition of a Han-Chinese-based form of national identity upon the millions of non-Han peoples (a.k.a., "forced acculturation") would quickly devolve into chaos if the central government made any concessions in Tibet. A part of me is hoping that - as the time of the Olympics draw closer - more ethnic minorities start to protest throughout the country. (If it really got out of hand, it might be the first time that an Olympics was canceled by a host nation for a reason other than a World War. Tragic for the athletes, but I think that they can get over it, but well worth it, imho, if it means greater social and political freedoms for the Chinese people.)

However, one major thing that the Chinese government has working in its favor is its firm control over state media and information. If you look at stories covering Chinese national media coverage of the flame protests throughout the world, you will notice a disturbing trend - Chinese state media covers the protest story hours (if at all) after their first story of how great it was that the flame was making its way around the world.

Recently, the Australian PM, Kevin Rudd, gave a speech at Peking University and made some pointed comments in Mandarin when he went to China the other day. (Apparently, Chinese officials didn't like some of Rudd's comments.) Many of these were focused on China needing to be in harmony with the rules of the world to work toward utopia. (The speech linked to above is apparently a translation from Mandarin, and, as such, draws many allusions that work better in Mandarin than in English.) The fact that he spoke fluent Mandarin meant that his words couldn't be censored by translators, and could only really be censored by omission for later broadcast.

I only bring this up because if you talk with Chinese people - even Chinese nationals in the United States - there is a great defensiveness when it comes to any criticism of their government, or their "right" to hold the Olympics. The root of this type of sentiment may - I assume - be a result of the understanding that citizens not question the policy of the central government, and to unquestioningly accept the statements of history and policy that are fed them. (Ask a Chinese national you know how many wars China started since 1949, the state of human rights in China today, etc., and you are likely to get a very defensive - or completely uninformed - response.)

Going back to the issue of the Olympic flame and the Chinese government, I have to agree with Ed, in that I, too, am "happy to see these protests going on and I'm particularly happy to see them happening in so many different nations." However, I believe that so long as the Chinese government maintains control over all media and information, Chinese people won't understand why people are protesting. I believe that so long as Chinese people are disallowed from openly questioning their government, they will not understand why people are protesting. I also believe that so long as Western nations rely on non-Chinese speakers to deliver international policy statements in China that censoring their speeches will be too easy, and the Chinese people won't be allowed to understand why people are protesting. Finally, I agree with the statement from the BBC, that China is more concerned with its national security than on its international image. It will hold on to as much state control of the media, will attempt to limit the movements of the press during the games, and go back to business-as-usual after the games are over. All this means that - yes - the Chinese people won't understand why people are protesting.

Maybe I'm wrong. Hopefully I'm wrong. I'm scared of how much I may be right.

Problems with EToH fuels

Reading through my usual news feeds (mostly related to science), I found that there were three stories - all through the PhysOrg.com newsfeed - about how fuel ethanol was becoming less favored around the world. This is not a surprise for me, since I have been - for over a year - skeptical about the claims of how wonderful this new technology is for people and the environment.

The spinners failed (ha!) to show how much energy is required to move energy feed stocks from farms to energy plants. They failed to show how much energy is required to make the ethanol. They also failed to show how much energy is required to transport the ethanol to market. And this is only looking at the direct energy inputs to the system.

Indirect energy inputs to this whole system comes from the energy needed to pump and spray groundwater; create and transport fertilizers and pesticides; clear and plow the fields; and remove the byproducts of stalks and stems to name a few. Then there are non-energy costs to a system of ethanol production which include nitrogen loading in rivers; increased sediment runoff into lakes, ponds, and streams; loss of wetlands; increased use of GMO crops (and we still don't know if there are negative impacts of GMOs in the wild); eutrophication; and burning former conservation lands to name only a few that come to mind.

Stack on top of that rising costs of food around the world (mostly blamed on a hungry India and China); a declining value of the US dollar (causing international oil prices - set to the USD - to rise); a skyrocketing national debt figure; and lowered environmental regulations, you start to get a picture of how bad things might actually be.

And all this I knew before even reading the articles. (I still haven't read through them at the time of this writing.)

The first article - Fueling ethanol production while protecting water quality - talks about the need to minimize the amounts of N and P entering into water systems. Increased levels of N and P have been linked directly to anoxia in the Gulf of Mexico and inland water systems, respectively. The article reviews the benefits of different types of ethanol production - some of which are still experimental - and doesn't really make the point that once a major investment takes place in one form of infrastructure, there is little desire to chance that infrastructure, especially if there are more costs to be incurred. (People want returns-on-investment, not more costs.)

The second article - World cooling on biofuel solution to climate change - touches on some international perspectives of the different needs of food producers and energy producers. It seems to be rather a basic overview of different points-of-view.

The third article - Study finds concern with biofuels - is a summary of an academic essay - Biofuels and Biodiversity: Principles for Creating Better Policies for Biofuel Production- from Conservation Biology. The essay has a nifty table showing that corn has roughly 81-85 kg CO2 emission/MJ energy - one of the highest of all the energy conversion options reviewed. Within the "grass -> ethanol" category, "native prairie grasses" had the lowest GHG emissions potential, with -88 kg CO2 emission/MJ energy (that's right: negative). However, the overall winner (since I presented corn as the overall loser) across categories is using microalgae to make biodesiel, with a whopping -183 CO2 emission/MJ energy!

Speaking of microalgae to biodesiel, there was a story in EcoGeek recently about this. However, I'll not go into it in more detail here. And wouldn't you know it? Just as I went to check on this story, PhysOrg's newsfeed gave me:

Algae could one day be major hydrogen fuel source. Serendipity?

Not really April Fool's Day humor

Via Evolving Thoughts comes a response to the claim that Darwinism was the cause of Jewish persecution. Although done using the satirical application of crossing out whatever religion was persecuting Jews and replacing it with "Darwinism," the underlying message - that Jews were persecuted throughout history, long before Darwin was born - is quite clear.

I have yet to see the film Expelled, because it hasn't come to Australia yet, but I have become absolutely convinced that Ben Stein is correct. Darwinism causes antisemitism. I have therefore conveniently listed all the cases known of this below the fold. I'll stick with those in which Jews were killed or which led up to justifying such killings. I have of course had to correct the Darwinian fake history, which I have done with strikeouts and italic insertions so you all can see how perfidious these Darwinian revisionists are.

38CE: Thousands of Jews were killed in Alexandria, under Darwin's influence, as reported by Philo.

Christian Darwinist era

315CE: Constantine published the Edict of Milan. [...] Jews lost many rights with this edict. They were no longer permitted to live in Jerusalem, or to proselytize.

...

Eleventh Century

The eleventh century saw Muslim Darwinist pogroms against Jews in Spain; those occurred in Cordoba in 1011 and in Granada in 1066.[3] In the 1066 Granada massacre, a Muslim Darwinist mob crucified the Jewish vizier Joseph ibn Naghrela and massacred about 4,000 Jews.[4]

...

Twelfth Century

1189 CE: At his coronation, under Darwinian influence, the rumour came that the new king Richard Lionheart wanted Jews killed for not showing reverence to the cross (a common trick by the Darwinists to disguise their activities). Several Jews were killed when mobs of Darwinists set fire to their houses at night.

...

Thirteenth Century

1205 CE: The Darwinist Pope declares that Jews are in eternal servitude because they killed Christ, a view that originated with the Darwinist Church Father, St John Chrystostom.

...

Seventeenth Century

In 1648 the Commonwealth [of Poland-Lithuania] was devastated by several conflicts, in which the Commonwealth lost over a third of its populations (over three million people), and Jewish losses were counted in hundreds of thousands. First, the Chmielnicki Uprising when Bohdan Khmelnytsky's Cossacks massacred tens of thousands of Jews and Poles in the eastern and southern areas he controlled (today's Ukraine). It is recorded that Chmielnicki told the people that the Poles had sold them as slaves "into the hands of the accursed Jews". The precise number of dead may never be known, but the decrease of the Jewish population during that period is estimated at 100,000 to 200,000, which also includes emigration, deaths from diseases and jasyr (captivity in the Ottoman Empire). The Jewish community suffered greatly during the 1648 Cossack uprising which had been directed primarily against the Polish nobility. The Jews, perceived as allies of the nobles, were also victims of the revolt, during which about twenty per cent of them were killed.

Nineteenth Century

1809CE: Charles Darwin, the Destroyer, the Evil One, is born

...

Yes, it is a long piece, but it seems quite extensively researched. I could be wrong, though, since I'm not a student of history. However, any time someone pulls out the Darwin-caused-Nazism canard, point that ignoramus to this page.

Or you can point him to a number of other pages, including PZ Myer's latest statement on how, for such a long time in history, the knowledge that "If members of a population die or are killed off, they will leave no descendants for subsequent generations." Well, duh. That's why so many kings ensured the presence of their "line" by having so many children (which would come to haunt them in the end, as so many claimants for a vacated throne would rally for power).