Birth by Cesarean in the US

LA Times: Childbirth: Can the U.S. improve?

Doctors in the US are recommending cesarean sections for births routinely (instead of just in cases where the mother's or baby's life is in danger), leading to increased medical expenses. Here's a quote from the article:

"The cesarean rate in the U.S. is higher than in most other developed nations. And in spite of a standing government goal of reducing such deliveries, the U.S. has set a new record every year for more than a decade.

"The problem, experts say, is that the cesarean -- delivery via uterine incision -- exposes a woman to the risk of infection, blood clots and other serious problems. Cesareans also have been shown to increase premature births and the need for intensive care for newborns. Even without such complications, cesareans result in longer hospital stays."

Heimlich pointed out to me that US infant mortality rate and other birth statistics may be skewed (and therefore appear to be worse than other developed nations), because many babies that would not have survived to term a decade ago are being delivered now.

Even taking factors such as those into account, the statistics that are found in that article are troubling.

Stars of Skymall

PC World: The Stars of Skymall

I love articles like this. Everyone always looks at those crazy SkyMall catalogs on planes, when you absolutely have nothing else to read. But no one actually buys any of that crap, right? I mean, if half of that stuff actually worked like they said it does, it would be front page news and the inventors would be rich. To me, SkyMall is like the Kmart of electronics stores.

I mean, look at what they advertise. An inflatable movie screen ($250)? A wrist wallet (for $15)? The ridiculous size of my wallet would definitely preclude the ability to wear it on my wrist (or I would develop enormous biceps in the attempt). How about a Bigfoot garden sculpture (for $100)? As if garden sculptures weren't kitschy enough without them being hideous.

Anyway, PC World ordered a bunch of the devices out of the catalog, and wrote about how well they worked (or didn't). Some of the devices that they tested included a wristband that purports to stop you from snoring, a spy pen that surreptitiously records video, and a watch that plays video.

planet-f1

A little while ago, my desktop computer started running really slowly. It was about time for the annual reinstall of the Windows partition anyway, so I wiped the disk and produced a fresh install. In the process, I upgraded to the latest versions of Firefox, SX Recorder, etc. After the fresh reinstall, my computer went right back to being slow as hell.

Granted, this is not the fastest computer in the world. As a matter of fact, it's getting slower by the month, but that's a story for another time...

At first, the slowdown pissed me off in general. This turned into me being pissed off at Microsoft. Then I noticed that my computer was only really slow in Firefox. Then I got pissed at Firefox, and was ready to swear it off.


After a lot of trial and error, I ended up determining that the problem was being caused by having planet-f1.com loaded in Firefox all of the time. See, I always have a Firefox window open to all of the news sources that I regularly read (Google News, BBC News, etc). This includes planet-f1.com, because I am such a big Formula One fan.

But now I'm pissed off at them, for having such a fantabulously shitty website that it's causing a huge slowdown on my aging computer. Without that website loaded, my computer runs fine. Grrrr...

Gas Advisor

I just discovered the Gas Advisor on BillShrink [billshrink.com].


Like most people, I probably don't shop around for gas prices as much as I should. And my commute is longer than most people's, so shame on me.

Anyway, on Gas Advisor, you can enter your home and work addresses, and you can look at what gas stations would be the most economical to fill up at. It takes into account the current price of gas (at the octane level that you specify) at the different stations, and also figures in the cost of the detour that you will have to take to get to the gas station. In other words, it might not make sense to take a 10 minute detour to buy gas that is only 3cents/gallon cheaper than a gas station right on your route. And Gas Advisor will run through the calculations to figure out which option will cost you the least. You can even enter in your car's average fuel economy, or it will automatically pull up the average's for your specific car model.


There is also the option to only search for certain brands of gas, or just gas stations near work or just near home, etc.

It's a great idea, but I think that it needs a little work. For one, it calculates a route from home to work based on the addresses that you enter, but it doesn't allow you to modify the route that it says you take. So, if you're like me, and take a slightly longer route to work to minimize stoplights, traffic, etc, there is no way to get Gas Advisor to account for those changes to the route.

It also has trouble finding certain stations that I know are along my route that typically have cheaper gas. It's a great idea, though, and I'm sure that as it matures, it will be a very useful tool.

Saving for Retirement

There's an interesting post on Get Rich Slowly concerning the calculation of how much money you should plan on saving for retirement. This is one of the few subjects that really does keep me awake at night (the other subjects being sharks, getting locked in a room with Oprah, and having an odd number of pre-wrapped cheese slices in the fridge).

Anyway, the crux of the post is that retirement savings calculators shouldn't be based on your current income, but on your current spending. I never thought about it this way before, but it makes a lot of sense. If we typically spend $50k/year, then that's going to be a better indicator of what we will need in the future than what we're currently making.

Still, all signs point to needing to save in the neighborhood of $1-1.2 million by the time we're 65. Even counting the equity that we'll have in our house, that seems like an unobtainable amount.

On a related note, here's an interesting article called The Index Funds Win Again. It contains some analysis showing how index funds perform better, on the average, than almost any managed type. From the article:

So in a miserable year for stocks, index funds may not look very appealing. But it turns out that, after fees and taxes, it is the extremely rare actively managed fund or hedge fund that does better than a simple index fund.

This Year's Mortgage Meltdown

Financial Times: More mortgage meltdown misery

Are you ready for another mortgage meltdown? Last year it was the subprime mortgages causing all of the problems. This year, the interest rates on Alt-A and Option ARM mortgages will start resetting, causing another round of defaults. These are loans where the mortgage payments were fixed for the first five years, but then the interest rates are adjustable afterward.

Unfortunately, the number of Alt-A and Option ARM mortgages outnumbers the number of subprime mortgages that were written back in the day. Which means that if a similar percentage of those homeowners defaults, it'll be a larger overall number of homeowners. From the article:

"The scale of the problem is massive. There are approximately 3m Alt-A loans totaling $1,000bn outstanding, according to Inside Mortgage Finance, a trade publication in Bethesda, Maryland. Alt-A loans, made to borrowers who fell between subprime and prime status, represent 20 per cent of the current mortgage market..."

"Extrapolating from current non-performance figures, he thinks more than 50 per cent of Option ARM mortgages are likely to default, with a comparable proportion of Alt-A loans defaulting.He fears the current equity and debt markets are not reflecting the potential impact this will have on the economy going into 2010 and 2011."

The next few years are going to be epically bad.

Lunchn

Someone just pointed out Lunchn to me, which is a free site that allows a group of people to manage regular trips out to eat.

It utilizes Google Maps to show you where nearby restaurants are, allows you to flag your favorite locations, and allows a group of people to vote on where they are going to meet up for a meal.


It's a fantastic idea, although it could use a little more polish. I have had trouble selecting a restaurant in the Google Maps interface when the density of restaurants is too high.

The restaurant markers are categorized by restaurant type, but many are difficult to distinguish between. Others have symbols that don't seem to make sense. Nevertheless, it looks like a fun tool to use.

Top 10 Stories You Missed in 2008

Foriegn Policy just ran a really interesting article: Top 10 Stories You Missed in 2008 [foreignpolicy.com].

The stories range from the next humanitarian catastrophe (similar to Darfur) which has begun in Sudan, to Sonic Blasters that were sold by US companies to China (which officially is a country that we have prohibited weapons sales to) in advance of the Olympics.

Other stories include assistance that the US is giving to India to develop a missile shield on the subcontinent, and moves that Russia is making to scoop up energy supplies worldwide.

It is a really interesting read, especially for news junkies like me who are pretty up on current events.

Image of refugees from Darfur from Hoisaeter's Flickr photostream [flickr.com].

ChaCha

Whenever I'm out with friends, we inevitably run into a situation where our conversation is stuck because we can't collectively remember something (or there is an unsolvable debate). For instance:

"You're insane. Val Kilmer has never been in a good movie."
"Wait, he was in that one movie with that guy..."
"That helps."
"No, that guy who can't act."
"That narrows it down. George Clooney? Leonardo DiCaprio? Matthew McConaughey?"
"No, uh... crap... Robert De Niro!"
"Ooookay. So, the only good movie that Val Kilmer has ever been in was with a guy who can't act?"
"Yeah. Crap. What was that movie? Oh, it was Heat. You know, the one with Natalie Portman."
"Natalie Portman was not in Heat!"

Anyway, one of my friends recently pointed me out to a service called ChaCha [chacha.com], which allows you to text a question in, and get an informed answer in return (via texting). They have a page listing a bunch of recent questions [chacha.com] that have been asked.

I don't really understand their business model (i.e. how they intend to generate revenue). It's a free service. I have seen answers that have come back, and they don't include an ad. There are no ads on their website.

I can't wait until the next time my friends and I have one of our debates, and I ask them to hold on for 10 minutes while I laboriously type out a question on my phone to ChaCha. And how long will it take for this service to be widely used by students taking tests?

US Raid in Syria

Times Online: Questions raised over Syrian complicity in US raid

Last week, US soldiers conducted a raid on the Syrian side of the Iraqi border, which sparked condemnation from the Syrian government [bbc.co.uk] and led to government-backed protests in Damascus [reuters.com].


According to the Times Online article, things are not as simple as they look. The assumption has been that the raid took place without prior approval from the Syrian government. But what if Syrian intelligence had told the US where the high-level Al Qaeda commander was, and authorized the raid? From the article:

"Abu Ghadiya was feared by the Syrians as an agent of Islamic fundamentalism who was hostile to the secular regime in Damascus. It would be expedient for Syria if America would eliminate him..."

"The Washington source said the Americans regularly communicate with the Syrians through a back channel that runs through Syria’s air force intelligence, the Idarat al-Mukhabarat al-Jawiyya."

"In the time-honoured tradition of covert US operations in the Middle East, this one seems to have gone spectacularly wrong. The Syrians, who had agreed to turn a blind eye to a supposedly quiet 'snatch and grab' raid, could not keep the lid on a firefight in which so many people had died."

That is a really interesting article, and it's plausibility is frightening.

Image from labanex's Flickr photostream [flickr.com].

Greg Pattillo

This weekend, Heimlich and I will get a real treat. We will get the opportunity to see Greg Pattillo perform. For those of you who aren't familiar with his work, he does this whole freestyle, beatboxing flute thing. It's a lot easier to understand if you just watch one of his videos:



If the embedded video doesn't work, use this link [youtube.com].

I haven't actually seen him perform live before, but the videos make it look like he puts on quite a performance. I'm sure that going back and forth between playing notes on the flute and notes with just his mouth is a lot harder than it looks (and it looks hard). Hopefully, he will live up to the hype.

Linkdump #597

Here are a few interesting links:

• Here's a video of NBA star LeBron James getting beaten in a game of horse. Some of the shots are incredible!
  
  
  
  If the embedded video doesn't work, use this link [youtube.com]. link via kottke.org.
  
  


• The Freakonomics Blog has some interesting graphics [nytimes.com], which simplify the explanations of McCain's and Obama's tax plans.
  
  Apparently, under either plan, you will get a tax cut -- unless you are in the top 1%, in which case Obama will make you pay more.
  
  


• There have been a ton of comments on the new Microsoft ad (the one post-Seinfeld):
  
  
  
  As stated by tons of other people, there is no shortage of problems with these ads. But I think that the bottom line is that as long as the product is terrible, having a good marketing campaign for it is, well... like putting lipstick on a pig. *rimshot*

Autocross

I have mentioned here and there about participating in autocross, which is an amateur form of autoracing that is relatively safe and economical. You are racing against the clock, not wheel to wheel. And whenever I try to explain it to people, I can just tell that what they're imagining doesn't match reality.

Below is a well-produced news segment explaining what autocross is. I need to remember to link to this every time someone asks me to explain autocross.



If the embedded video doesn't work, use this link [racingfilm.com].

Oh, and the 2008 Autocross National Championships [scca.com] is next week.

Fuelly

Matt Haughey [wholelottanothing.org] and Paul Bausch [onfocus.com] have started up Fuelly [fuelly.com], which is a website that allows you to share and track your car's fuel mileage, among other things.

They just opened their doors to the public last week, and apparently, it has started to take off.

I actually have been tracking the fuel consumption in my daily driver (and using Matlab to plot the statistics), so I can see why people would want to use this kind of service. If you are looking for a new vehicle, you can get access to a database of real-world fuel consumption by owners of that vehicle (albeit the data may be skewed, because Fuelly users will probably be more fuel efficient than average).

The reason that I have started to track my fuel mileage is because there are several things that I would like to measure (being a scientist), such as:

• Is there a noticeable impact on fuel economy when I change my engine air filter?
• Does my car do better with certain brands of gas than others (as I suspect that it does)?
• There is certainly a temperature-related effect on fuel economy, as lower ambient temperatures absolutely cause lower fuel efficiency numbers. But what is the relationship? Linear? Asymptotic?

In tracking my own data, I notice that the measurement of gallons of fuel is the largest source of uncertainty. The underlying assumption in these measurements is that if you fill your tank to the top every time you refuel, you will know how much gas you consumed in the miles that you have driven since your last fill up.

However, the gas pumps don't always fill your gas tank up to the same level. And if you "top off" your tank, you totally will throw the measurement off. My data once (erroneously) showed that I achieved 45mpg over one tank in my non-hybrid car (which is unrealistically high), because the gas station I went to didn't fully fill up my gas tank. And then on the next stop, where my gas tank did actually get filled to the top, my fuel economy dropped precipitously. Maybe there needs to be a way in Fuelly to add an asterisk to data that is questionable.

Image of Fuelly stats from mathowie's Flickr photostream [flickr.com].

LifeLock

A little while ago [fluggart.com], I posted about LifeLock and how it doesn't actually prevent identity theft.

In Bruce Schneier's latest Crypto-gram newsletter, he wrote an article about LifeLock [schneier.com], how it does work, and how they have been the victim of a smear campaign by the credit bureaus. It is an interesting read. Here is a quote from Schneier's article:

"In December 2003... credit bureaus were forced to allow you to put a fraud alert on their credit reports, requiring lenders to verify your identity before issuing a credit card in your name. This alert is temporary, and expires after 90 days. Several companies have sprung up... that automatically renew these alerts and effectively make them permanent."

"This service pisses off the credit bureaus and their financial customers. The reason lenders don't routinely verify your identity before issuing you credit is that it takes time, costs money and is one more hurdle between you and another credit card..."

"And, so began a smear campaign on the part of the credit bureaus... The biggest smear is that LifeLock didn't even protect Todd Davis, and that his identity was allegedly stolen. "

Schneier then goes on to explain how most credit card companies could easily combat the most common forms of identity theft, and they don't like companies like LifeLock highlighting this for everyone. Apparently, I was horribly misinformed when I posted about this months ago. I'm glad that I understand the real story now.

Google News and Subscription Sites

I have yet another suggestion for Google (maybe I should start a "Google suggestions" category for my posts)...

I used to use Google News exclusively when I read news online. It's great, because if you are interested in a story, you could read several stories on the topic on different news sources (allowing you to get past each news source's bias). Now I don't use it so much anymore, and it's because of the all of the links to interesting news stories on subscription sites (or ones that require free registration):


I'm not going to create an account on every crappy local news website just so that I can read one or two stories. I'm not going to give them my information so that they can use it to target ads towards me (or do who-knows-what with it). And, quite frankly, I'm just too lazy to fill out the forms.

Google, stop indexing the news sites that require a subscription or free registration. Or let people customize their Google News page to include or exclude those sites. Because right now, even though there are much fewer subscription sites indexed on Google News, it's still driving me (and probably tons of others) away.

Food Pairings

Here's an interesting article that I read recently: Food pairings: Working for or against you? [cnn.com].

Heimlich and I are fairly health-conscious. We try to stay fit, eat a balanced diet, and get enough vitamins and minerals. For instance, we eat lots of spinach, thinking that it is a good source of iron. Apparently, this is too simplistic a strategy, according to the article:

"Although spinach has lots of iron, your body doesn't absorb it well when spinach is eaten alone. (Sorry, Popeye.) But with vitamin C by its side, this vegetable becomes a true standout."

"That's because vitamin C converts the iron in spinach into a form that is more available to the body..."

This kind of has me wondering what else is wrong with our food selections.

Anyway, there are plenty of other interesting tidbits about food in that article.

Fish Herding

Ok, you all know that I am one of those crazy fish people, right? We have actually adopted another 55-gallon aquarium temporarily for the summer. So, we have plenty of fish in our house right now.

Anyway, here is an interesting story [cleveland.com] about a student who won a scholarship and a laptop computer with her project of teaching a fish to swim through a maze. She was also able to show that the fish could show another fish how to get through the maze.

The link also contains a video of the aquarium.

This kind of makes me wonder what I could be teaching my fish. Imagine how great a YouTube video would be of my fish "begging", or slapping me high-five with one of their tiny fins.

Pet Videos

Heather Armstrong recently posted a hilarious movie [dooce.com] of her dogs. Basically, she put their food dishes in front of them, but had them wait for the ok signal to start eating. One dog patiently sits there and waits for the ok signal, while the other dog keep alternating between looking at the food and looking at the owner. You can almost hear the gears turning in the dog's head.

Heimlich and I keep noticing these hilarious things that our fish do. And I have thought about trying to record video of these kinds of events happening (a la one of our fish imprisoning another one of our fish), but I always assume that everyone will find it boring to watch.

But whenever I see videos of other people's pets doing interesting things, I'm always interested in seeing them, so I don't know why I would assume that people wouldn't want to see movies of our fish.

Over-Sharing on hte Intarweb

This is an interesting article [nytimes.com] on the New York times about Emily Gould thoughts on over-sharing and being a micro-celebrity in the blogosphere. Well, it will be interesting to anyone who is interested in weblogging, anyway.

Basically, it boils down to a question of how much of your life to share on your weblog, and interesting effects that sharing too much may have on your life.

This is a subject that I frequently think about, even without realizing it. My weblog has had a few distinct phases over the years. Back in the beginning, when I was weblogging before everyone had a weblog, I probably shared too much. And now, it seems that I share so little that this weblog has become boring.

Part of the problem is that my life is a lot more boring now. Before I was married and owned a house, I spent a lot more time tinkering with computers and electronics, and doing all kinds of random crazy shit that made for good weblog fodder (how many people do you know that have actually caused their computer to burst into flames?). Now I spend most of my time working on my lawn (and who really wants to hear about that?).

Another part of the problem is that it is difficult to compartmentalize parts of my life with a weblog. For instance, I might not want my coworkers to be able to easily find drunken pictures of me, wearing panties on my head, while getting a tattoo (uh, not that those pictures exist...).

There are times when I think that it would be a lot easier to maintain an anonymous weblog instead of the one that I post to now. It would be easier to control who was reading it, because there would be no easy way to link the page to me. On the other hand, what would my web presence become? Fluggart.com would end up just being a domain name containing dead links. And vanity searches on my name would only come up with links to The Replacement Killers [imdb.com], and results from Table Tennis tournaments from the early 90's.

Lifelock

For the past few months, I have been hearing commercials for Lifelock [lifelock.com], which claim that they can protect you from identity theft. These are the commercials in which the CEO of the company gives out his SSN and essentially dares people to try to steal his ID. I have always wondered how that worked.

Well, now I know: ID Security Firm LifeLock Sued For Misleading Marketing [informationweek.com]. Here's a quote:

"The company allegedly fails to make clear that it charges subscribers for an annual credit report that's available to them for free when placing a fraud alert. And it allegedly fails to adequately disclose that its $1 million service guarantee 'is essentially futile' given the way the guarantee is worded..."

"'LifeLock does not necessarily protect its subscribers' identities as advertised,' the lawsuit claims. 'Indeed, the statements by LifeLock's CEO regarding the ability of LifeLock to protect his own identity are deceptive because his identity was stolen while he was a customer and is, upon information and belief, presently being misappropriated by at least 20 identity thieves.'"

Taser Parties

Here is an interesting article: Taser parties a growing US trend [bbc.co.uk]. Apparently, people are having parties similar to the tupperware or Pampered Chef parties of old, but are selecting tasers instead.

People are getting together, discussing disturbing statistics, and expounding upon the virtues of self-defense devices.

In general, I think that this is a great idea. But then I think of my group of friends, and what would happen if we had one of these parties. You just know (with a lot of certainty) that someone would show up that had too much to drink, and pretty soon, the whole party would end up as some snarky Fark headline.

US Incarceration Rate

Recently, I saw a link to a NY Times article called Inmate Count in U.S. Dwarfs Other Nations' [nytimes.com].


The article features a list of statistics and a guess as to reasons why the incarceration rate is so much higher in the US than other developed nations. Here's a quote:

"The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners."

"...it is the length of sentences that truly distinguishes American prison policy. Indeed, the mere number of sentences imposed here would not place the United States at the top of the incarceration lists. If lists were compiled based on annual admissions to prison per capita, several European countries would outpace the United States. But American prison stays are much longer, so the total incarceration rate is higher."

I thought that it was an interesting article. Especially because I (and probably most other Americans) feel that prison sentences (particularly for violent crime) are too short.

If you ask me, if you are convicted of 1st degree murder, rape, or child molestation, you should never be allowed back into society ever again. You can't be reformed or rehabilitated, and you're a danger to society. I don't understand how people who commit these crimes get off with only a few years in jail. And I'm more outraged by people in the Catholic church getting no punishment for harboring child molesters than I am with people getting jail sentences that seem too long.

Image from Gipic's Flickr photostream [flickr.com].

The Race to Save the Cougar Ace

Recently, I read a pretty amazing article about a team of people who rush in to save abandoned, damaged ships [wired.com]. The article follows the team through a job. There is a damaged ship that is severly listing in the middle of the Pacific. It is full of brand-new cars. They will get a percentage of the value of the cargo if they can prevent the ship from sinking, right it, and get it back to port. If they fail, they get nothing.

All they do is big-money, big-risk operations. And one crew member died in the process of this job. Here's a quote:

Titan's business plan hinged on the idea that ships could be saved by human ingenuity, not horsepower, and the company's unconventional approach worked... ...Titan won [a 1992] contract by proposing a novel approach: It hired a naval architect to create a computer model of the ship. The model indicated that the vessel would float again if water was pumped out of the holds in a specific sequence. Titan put the plan into action using a few crates of relatively inexpensive pumps; the ship bobbed to the surface as if by magic. Since then, a naval architect capable of rapidly building digital 3-D ship models has been a key member of the Titan team.

The amount of ingenuity they display is amazing. It's the kind of job that I would dream about (but would never want, in actuality) -- using mountain climbing gear to maneuver around ships, using computer models to form a solution, and racing against time to get the job done.

The article is complete with several interesting pictures of the job.

Cornell Ranger Walking Robot

I recently saw a story on the Cornell Ranger robot: Cornell robot sets a record for distance walking [cornell.edu]. From the article:

...the Cornell Ranger robot just kept going and going April 3 when it set an unofficial world record by walking nonstop for 45 laps -- a little over 9 kilometers or 5.6 miles -- around the Barton Hall running track.

As a former researcher in the field of walking robots, I concur that it is quite an accomplishment.

There are plenty of walking robots out there like the Honda Asimo [honda.com], or the Sony robots [google.com], plus the countless others that have never left the laboratory. One of the chief architects behind the Cornell Ranger robot, professor Andy Ruina, is trying to prove a point to the rest of the robotics world -- most roboticists are doing it wrong, and the evidence is in the enormous power consumption of existing robots.

When people walk, they swing their legs freely. It doesn't take an enormous amount of energy to swing your leg into position for the next step, or even to support your body with one leg. But if you look at walking robots today, most of them do the equivalent of tensing up all of their muscles to swing a leg into position for the next step. It is questionable whether these robots will ever become practical to perform every day tasks due to the power consumption.

Ruina's lab is producing robots, such as Ranger, that take advantage of natural dynamics to allow walking with a minimum of energy consumption.

Game Show Problem Applications

So, I've posted [fluggart.com] about The Monte Hall Problem [wikipedia.org] before. This is the counter-intuitive problem where you have the choice between a bunch doors, and no one ever believes that there is a strategy that will allow you to win more often then just choosing randomly.

I recently saw a New York Times article [nytimes.com] showing an application of this problem in real life. Honestly! Here's a quote from the article:

"The Yale psychologists first measured monkeys' preferences by observing how quickly each monkey sought out different colors of M&Ms. After identifying three colors preferred about equally by a monkey — say, red, blue and green — the researchers gave the monkey a choice between two of them."

"If the monkey chose, say, red over blue, it was next given a choice between blue and green. Nearly two-thirds of the time it rejected blue in favor of green, which seemed to jibe with the theory of choice rationalization: Once we reject something, we tell ourselves we never liked it anyway (and thereby spare ourselves the painfully dissonant thought that we made the wrong choice)."

"But Dr. Chen says that the monkey’s distaste for blue can be completely explained with statistics alone..."

"If so, then the monkey’s choice of red over blue wasn’t arbitrary. Like Monty Hall’s choice of which door to open to reveal a goat, the monkey’s choice of red over blue discloses information that changes the odds."

Red Sox Fans Try to Jinx New Yankee Stadium

Over the weekend, I saw this news article: Yanks unearth Sox jersey at new stadium [yahoo.com]. Apparently, during the construction of the new Yankee stadium, a construction worker (who is a Red Sox fan) threw a Red Sox jersey into the concrete being poured.

Here's a quote from the article:

"Team officials watched Sunday as construction workers removed the jersey, with slugger David Ortiz's name on it, from 2 feet of concrete in a service corridor of the stadium that's under construction."

"The team says a construction worker — who is a Red Sox fan — recently buried the jersey there while on the job."

"The Yankees plan to donate the jersey to charity, and may pursue a lawsuit against the construction worker."

A lawsuit? I can't wait to hear this one...

Lawyer:	"Your honor, this construction worker attempted to jinx the New York Yankees..."
Judge:	"This has to be the most asinine lawsuit I have ever heard. How could a group of grown men believe in jinxes in the first place? I'm sure that garbage and all kinds of other crap finds its way into concrete at construction sites all of the time. Get out of my sight, all of you..."

Space Shuttle Prep

On kottke.org, I recently saw a link to a series of images [bmwsporttouring.com] showing how the space shuttle is prepared for launch. It includes a lot of pictures from the Vertical Assembly Building that I found very interesting.


The link contains about 40 images, starting with the arrival of the external fuel tank, to the attachment of the rocket motors and the shuttle module, through the cargo prep, to the launch. Fascinating.

Akron Proposal to Bridgestone/Firestone

A few months ago [fluggart.com], I posted that Bridgestone Firestone was trying to decide what to do with its North American technical center. The three options that are currently on the table are: an extensive renovation of the current facilities, building a brand-new facility in Akron, OH (where it is currently located), or building a brand-new facility near Nashville (where the corporate headquarters for the North American division are located). The decision is to be announced later this year.

While we were in Berlin, it was announced that the city of Akron (together with the county and state) has presented its proposal [ohio.com] for incentives to be given to Bridgestone Firestone to keep its technical center in Akron. Here are some selected quotes from the article:

"State of Ohio, Akron and Summit County officials made an estimated $68 million pitch Wednesday to persuade Bridgestone Firestone Inc. to keep its technical center and 600-plus high-paying jobs in the city."

"The proposal would have the Summit County Port Authority owning a state-of-the-art technical center building at one of two locations in the city and leasing the building to Bridgestone Firestone at what County Executive Russ Pry said would be favorable rates."

"The city could end up buying the current Firestone Parkway technical center building for as much as $5 million, he said."

"The scope of the proposal is not the same as the nearly $900 million East Akron redevelopment project that involves building new global and North American headquarters for Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., Pry said."

Bird Poop News Blooper

Here's a link that has been going around:



It's a video of a local news person doing a story on location -- the typical fluff piece. Anyway, a bird poops directly into the guy's mouth and he starts gagging.

It's awesome, because nothing is funnier than watching people get hurt.

Happy Holidays

I hope that everyone had a great holiday and traveled safely. In the meantime, here is a link to the International Herald Tribune's 2007 in pictures [iht.com].

Near Space Ballooning

On boingboing [boingboing.net], I saw a link to a near space balloon project, in which a helium balloon was sent up to a 30km altitude with GPS, a camera, etc.


The pictures are quite amazing.

A parachute system was devised in order to recover the equipment. The flight time was a little over two hours, and some simple tools were used to determine the flight trajectory (and to make sure the equipment was not going to land in a body of water).

I love seeing technical challenges like this, and how people choose to solve them.

Closets

Marley pointed me out to easyclosets.com [easyclosets.com], which is apparently where they ordered some custom closet units for their house.

You can enter dimensions for one of your closets, and then start playing around with different types of shelves and cabinets that could be crammed in there. It's kind of fun to look through all of the pictures and imagine what my house might look like if I weren't a ridiculous packrat... and have an entire room full of outdated computers... and another with auto parts... and all of my shoes...

I probably wouldn't have a closeting problem if I got rid of all of this crap. I still have notes from all of my college courses. You know, courses with names like: "Numerical Methods Developed During the Early Russian Neoclassical Period" and "Performing Finite Element Analysis on a Slide Rule I". When the hell am I ever going to use those again?

I'm just going to jump headlong into this tangent, ok? Actually, the first numerical methods class that I took in college was taught in Fortran [wikipedia.org], which is a language that is so outdated that it is only used by NASA. It has LINE NUMBERS, ok? And the worst part of it is, I'm not sure if that is a worse statement about my age or the quality of the university. We might as well have been trying to implement 4th order Runge-Kutta on Apple ][e's in AppleSoft BASIC, for how useful that code is now.

Main Battle Tanks

I have been discovering that Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] has a ton of information about main battle tanks.

I started reading about the vaunted Merkava tank, and how the space between the inner and outer hulls is filled with diesel fuel (which both efficiently uses space and is a defense against HEAT rounds).

Then, of course, I wanted to know what the difference was between HEAT rounds and other types of main gun ammunition, such as armor-piercing fin-stabilized discarding sabot penetrators.

The different types of munitions work better against certain types of armor, although the latest Western main battle tanks all seem to use Chobham armour. Other tanks (such as Russian ones) use reactive armor, which can be defeated by tandem charge weapons, such as TOW or Hellfire missiles.

There is also an extensive article on the M1 Abrams, and its performance in several Gulf War battles such as the Battle of Al Busayyah and the Battle of Medina Ridge.

Then there is an interesting footnote about the performance of the Lion of Babylon main battle tanks in the first Gulf War:

"The Iraqi Generals wasted tons and tons of HEAT and even sabot tank shells in indirect fire missions from reveted positions,[41] achieving absolutely nothing against coalition troops before being located and wiped out by helicopter or A-10 air strikes..."

"However, the destruction of the Tawakalna Division (the bulk of it comprised of Lion of Babylon tanks) by the US 1st and 3rd Armored Divisions cost the Allied forces too much time, and consequently they were unable to destroy other Republican Guard divisions before ordered to cease-fire. Many authors maintain that the very existence of Saddam's Regime for the next 12 years can be attribute to this fact, since the surviving Republican Guard units crushed the Shiite and Kurd risings right after the Iraqi defeat in Desert Storm.[42]"

Relationship Diagrams

A little while ago, I saw a link to this diagram [flickr.com] on Gulfstream [beebo.org]. The diagram shows the relationship between the guests at the author's wedding, and some of them are really amusing.

For instance, between Cindi and Brud, the connection reads "got shat on while on her first date to the zoo with". And between Rees and Mick, the connection reads "once in a Chinese restaurant in Suva, Fiji, three chairs get broken, one after another by".

If I had created one of those for our wedding, we probably could have created one almost as amusing. For instance, two of our friends are siblings (who both happen to read this weblog). We could have created a connection between those two that reads, "JD, who NO ONE believes (because they are so dissimilar) is the sister of BD".

Another connection would have read, "RQ, claimed his shoes caused the Three Mile Island Accident in a story told to BR".

Another would have read, "BL, who proposed in line for tickets at the opening night of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by saying 'Here' while handing over a ring to JK".

Hobbit-Man: The King Returns

On kottke.org the other day [kottke.org], I caught a link to one of the most hilarious reviews [thenoiseboard.com]. It's of the last Lord of the Rings movie, and it's so crude and lowest denominator-ish, but it made me laugh.

I would think that it would be harder to really appreciate the review if you weren't a fan of Lord of the Rings, though. Here's a quote (does this really warrant a spoiler warning?):

"At the same time, the two other midget-men and the giant hippies have seriously fucked up that one evil guy’s tower (he was Count Duke in Star Wars: Every Cock in the Universe Up My Ass Part II), and they hook back up with Magneto, and also that chick with the bow and arrows and finally the Giant Midget with the Axe."

Holy shit. I guess it really does not take much to make me laugh.