Which Sort?

Which sort of human flesh should you eat?  In medieval Europe, that was an important question...

Dinosaur Farts Caused Global Warming...

...around 150 million years ago...

Oh, Great...

Damned if you do, damned if you don't...

Time Lapse Canaries...

The Canary Islands, that is.  At night.  Beautiful!

El Cielo de Canarias 2012 / The Light of Stars from Daniel López on Vimeo.

CIA Thwarts Terrorist...

Now there's perhaps one of my very favorite word pairs: “thwarts” and “terrorist”!

There's not a lot of detail available, other than the most important: terrorist fail.

I'm Not Allergic...

So far as I'm aware, I'm not allergic to anything (unless you count liberals).  I grew up on a farm...

Sparse Fourier Transform, or sFFT...

Many years ago I had a consulting gig that required me to analyze the sound made by ball bearings in (very expensive) rotating machinery.  After a bit of research, it became obvious that an algorithm known as the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) was the way to go.  On the processors of the day (in the '70s), computing the FFT was a lengthy process – one run of the final firmware I wrote could take almost an hour. 

Recently four researchers at MIT came up with a much, much faster way to compute FFTs when the signal has structure of some kind.  That was certainly true of the signal I was analyzing!  With just a software change, that piece of gear I built could have been much faster.  Dang!

Backup for GMail...

If you're comfortable at the command line, and you have a gmail account, here's something that might interest you: an open source tool (written in Python) that will backup your gmail account to your local computer, and let you restore those messages to any gmail account.  I'm trying it right now (my backup is going to take a while!).

I actually have exactly this program on my list of “Maybe I should write this!” projects.  I'll probably get rid of it now :-)

Before and After...

Before and after the Soviet Union, that is.  Der Spiegel has a slide show of before-and-after photos of East Germany.  These could just as well have been taken in Estonia of 1991 vs. Estonia today...

Rachel on Greece...

My girl Rachel Lucas is back blogging (at last!) from her new home in Italy.  Here she makes some observations about recent events in Greece:

“Europe’s voters don’t know they’re committing suicide — or don’t care.”

Post title is about yesterday’s French and Greek national elections and is a quote from Arthur Herman at NRO. I can’t figure out which it is, either, even though I live in Europe. My main impression is more along the lines of, they know they’re being accused of committing economic suicide, but they just don’t believe it and don’t see it that way. It’s not really ignorance or lack of giving a shit, it’s denial.

Which is exactly what I think is also happening in America, a few years behind schedule but right on pace to catch up.

Anyway, this is all I’ve been reading about all day so here is my depressing Monday post that is really just a collection of links and quotes. You’re welcome.

Making the “Soft Sciences” More Accountable...

What a great idea!  I wish them every success, and I hope this gets replicated for other sciences where reproducability hasn't been traditionally required...

The Government Dependency Index...

The Heritage Foundation has taken a stab at measuring the degree to which Americans are dependant on government assistance.  Even better, they've computed this index over time, from 1962 to 2010 (the most recent year for which they have data).

The general idea is to provide an objective metric that reflects the totality of government-provided assistance of all types.  There's an old saying in the business world: “If you can't measure it, you can't manage it!” – this represents the first attempt at an objective measure of something I (and many others) would dearly love to manage.

My first reaction to seeing this chart was this: that the index has increased by at least a factor of 15 within my lifetime.  That factor is assuredly substantially higher, actually – because this chart leaves off the first decade of my life, and the most recent two years.  Ouch!  And no wonder the government's meddling seems all-pervasive to me when compared with our government when I was a youth.

My second reaction was this: how did the Heritage Foundation put this together?  Fortunately for all of us, their methodology and supporting data is readily available on their web site.  The article announcing this index is chock full of interesting (though often quite depressing) compilations of information.

I would love to somehow require everyone to read and comprehend this article before voting in November...