Everyone and everything wants me to learn R, including apparently the New York Times. Normally, I would give in to this kind of pressure. But I haven’t been an academic since late 2008 (or at least, not officially). I forget, do non-academics do things like learning R?
They say Neil Young has a vault, literally a vault, chock with orphaned material that’s accumulated over the years. Just in the last while he’s been cracking it open and letting it float along out. I don’t know if that’s what this is, but this is something: NPR will be streaming a full set that Young did at the Cantebury House in Ann Arbor back in 1968, possibly including a version of Sugar Mountain which people will know from the Decade compilation.
The audio will be up here at midnight tonight. An album version of the same thing will be out December 2.
The Canterbury House still exists of course, I’m not sure if it’s the same location, but it’s a good place to catch a low-key show.
The news came out about an hour ago. I emailed It’s Hot in Here’s Washington Correspondent Kerry Duggan to ask if she would give us the low-down on Monday, and she sent a phone-cam shot she had just taken of the triumphant Waxman emerging onto the capitol steps. I feel like a news team.
One of these days.
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Listen in this week for exxxtra special guest Dan Fahey from UC Berkeley, expert on resources and conflict in the Great Lakes Region of Africa. Future Dr. Fahey schools us on why our cellphones and i(solationist)pods are fueling violence in the ‘Democratic’ Republic of the Congo. Also, a new ‘Eco-Warrior’ segment and more from Vijay Vaitheeswaran of the Economist on carbon offsets.
- Congo: from the NY Times
- This just in: 61 trees per person!
- Raw off the line: Blue Ocean Institute’s Sushi Guide
- California passed Proposition 1A to construct a high-speed rail link.
- The first legal sale of African ivory since 1989, but you won’t be buying it on Ebay.
- NEW EPA Rule: No new coal plants without “Best Available Control Tech” for CO2!!
- Dry Cleaning: It blows, and may result in: depression of the central nervous system; damage to the liver and kidneys; impaired memory; confusion; dizziness; headache; drowsiness; and eye, nose, and throat irritation. Repeated dermal exposure may result in dermatitis. No joke. here’s why.
Goloco: What’s not to love?
Today I received two letters. One was the DTE energy bill. It had two pamphlets: one advertising a payment restructuring plan for heavily overdue accounts going into the winter season; one advertising their wind energy premium option. The second letter was from a local credit union, advertising their lack of integration with the world financial system.
I’m entering the frantic final weeks of my thesis preparation. I may be posting to the blog less as a consequence.
A while ago I was contacted by someone who was considering spending some time in Reserva Los Cedros in Ecuador, asking what my general opinions of that place might be. I made the website for the reserve and they found my email there. I finally got back to them today, and in case it might be useful for others thinking of spending some time up there, here’s what I thought to say.
Hey Jody, sorry for the long wait,
OK, Los Cedros.
What it isn’t: professional. There is no managed tourist program or sophisticated conservation apparatus at reserva Los Cedros. It’s really just a whole lot of cloud forest sitting on a mountain top. Occasionally some scientists go there, but that’s not especially common as far as I can tell. The guy who runs it is a crotchety old coot.
What it is: a whole bunch of cloud forest sitting on a mountain top. And if there’s anything better than that, it would be a whole bunch of cloud forest sitting on a mountain top without a bunch of smarmy professionals running the show. My experience with Ecaudor is that professionalism has a hard ceiling, and that the best thing that can happen there is for people not to screw things up too much. Conservation is mostly a matter of deliberate inaction. In that sense, Los Cedros is a conservation machine.
It’s also a treefort paradise. You can do practically whatever pleases you, live how you wish to live. They’ll probably expect you to cut some trail and tend the garden and if there are any active science programs going maybe you can census some monkeys or some orchids but I haven’t heard that there are any such programs at the moment. Ask Jose (crotchety old coot), he’ll know. It’s a lot of swinging in hammocks and watching the toucans break from canopy to canopy through the cloud mist and listening to the howler monkeys and occasionally trekking out for a dunk under the cascada. If I went back I’d probably try to repair the water line to the old middle house and set up my homestead there. And I probably could, it’s a very do-you-own-thing scenario.
One major variable is: who else will be there at the same time? There’s no guessing what other “volunteers” will be around, and it makes a difference. I’ve spoken with people who were practically alone for their entire stay, which could be lonely or marvelous depending on your inclinations. When I was there there was good little crew and we had a fine time.
Last time I was up was 3 (?) years ago and nothing much had changed since 2001 when I first went, which suited me fine. Some people would hate the experience as pointless and vague. Whenever I get too busy, I imagine a month in the cloud forest.
As for the cloud forest itself: I’ve spent a couple months in the jungle basin doing science stuff, and it is incredible. But the cloud forest has 80% of the biological incredibleness of the jungle (which is to say, more than I can imagine, even having been there), and %10 of the discomfort, and much better views into the canopy and into the valleys. It’s a mind blower.
If all of that doesn’t sound like your kind of thing, do not go at all. It’s not a standard tourist activity. Nor is there any shame in not wishing to be bored and listless after walking 6 hours through the mud uphill. If that does sound like your kind of thing, I highly recommend it. I wish I was there now.
H
Over at change.gov, Obama antes up to Britain on its greenhouse emissions agenda:
“Implement an economy-wide cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050.”
There’s a few problems with cap and trade approaches, but the big one is setting the cap at meaningful level, in the face of enormous financial and political pressure, not to mention scientific uncertainty. But 80% is probably something like right.
Treeplanters have a saying: “How do you plant 2000 trees a day? Plant 1000 by lunch.” 2050 is an easy target, in a sense, but it’s completely right to be thinking long term. Now, we have to start setting aggressive mid and near term targets so we can get there. And them enforce them. And defend them against push-back when the enforcement starts. But hey, this can happen. 1000 by lunch people, let’s get on it.
There’s been a lot of talk about how Obama “swept” the election, and “recolored the electoral map”. It’s true he did well in the electoral college configuration. The electoral college dominates our picture of US elections because, strategically, it’s the only thing that counts. But it’s meaningless as a measure of people’s political values, except as a very dim surrogate of actual vote tallies.
The electoral college system typically has the effect of magnifying small differences, as is the case this time around. How much did Obama really win by? Around 6%. Granted, US presidential races are historically tight; Reagan’s 1980 “landslide” was less than 10%. But before we decide that we’re a changed nation it’s worth considering that out of every 20 voters, 11 chose Obama and 9 chose McCain. That’s very, very close.
As for the “recoloring of the map”, well, not really. True, states which voted for Bush one or both of the last elections went to Obama, but there wasn’t much change in the state-level popular vote either. Here’s Andrew Gelman’s analysis:
In sum: whatever the democrat:republican ratio was for a given state last time is pretty much what it was this time. Except for Hawaii. Go Hawaii!
Mark Newman was up through the night of the 4th cranking out fresh versions of his now-famous linearly-coloured and cartogram maps of the election results.
The full-on cartograms are confusing, so let’s look just at the shades-of-purple maps. Here’s what the election looked like (by county) two days ago:
and 4 years and a billion dollars in campaigning ago:
He’s removed outlines from his polygons, for which I give him 2 extra marks on his map. But otherwise the differences are subtle.
I don’t mean to be a buzzkill, and if you read more of Andrew Gelman’s stuff it looks like there really were some interesting demographic shifts. But Obama got on to some pretty lofty rhetoric there, and some of dialogue around his possible presidency and what it meant for America got pretty loft in response. We’re still in the same country here.
It’s also worth noting that despite promising transformative change for the better, Obama’s presidency is likely to be more about navigating bad change (pending world-wide recession), pre-empting future bad change (global climate, uh, change) and cleaning up bad change from administrations past. And he’ll have to do it with reduced resources and reduced international trust. Which is one of the reasons I’m glad that the subtle shifts in political values the country has gone through tipped things the way they did. I suspect Obama may be just about the right guy for the careful, gentle, disciplined, undramatic presidency his bombastic campaign poetry signed him up for.
There are so many things that are good about Barack Obama winning the American presidency. I’m just gonna sit around and enjoy the feeling. My god, remember the day after Bush winning the second time? It isn’t like that this time.
As is often the case, The Onion seems to have the most incisive coverage.
Incidentally, we love you John, but in future please stay the hell away from the presidency.
I’ve heard some of these ideas before in broad strokes, but Frank Schaeffer goes into more interesting and compelling and personal depth on the origins of the evangelical right in the U.S. and their interaction with politics than I think I’ve ever heard before. On Chicago NPR’s often-fantastic Worldview for October 30th.
I’ve used Hostgator as a web host for years. They’ve been cheap, nearly 100% reliable, very easy to contact and responsive when they do, and they keep sneakily increasing my allowable storage size and bandwidth without bothering to tell me.
I just went to see what my $10/mo is currently buying me. I learned 2 things:
- My storage space and bandwidth are now apparently unlimited. Seriously. So download those podcasts, by all means.
- Hostgator is now running on wind energy. So download those podcasts, by all means.
I learned last week (to my surprise) that Texas really is leading the country in wind power. And apparently Hostgator is buying Texas wind renewable energy credits in excess of its actual power consumption. Now, I’m always a little confused how these credits work: it’s not as if there’s a windmill somewhere that has it’s blades chained up and when you buy a credit they let it start turning. But I really really assume that this is genuinely good thing, and that this monitored and enforced and legitimate. In fact, the web site clearly states that it’s impossible to “ensure that only green electrons” reach you, and goes on to explain with box and arrow diagrams how it actually does all work, and I’m just going to admit: I’m confused and I just want to be beleive that I’m buying wind power.
The corporate blog has a post on the subject of the switch to alternative energy which raises some issues with alternative energy credits in web hosting, and promotes their version of project.
I find I am actually quite pleased that hughstimson.org is now (sort of, but possibly in a meaningful sense) wind powered.
Brought to us by the Counter-Intuitive Comparison Institute of North America.
The Big Chart (a video explanation).
“Which is better: a seahorse, or English people?”
This is marvelous. I’m curious where the Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge will fall in the final ranking of things.
Cartogram of Mean Shape Index for Juniper patches north of Strawberry Crater.
‘Just inches away from turning the mountains into a morgue’ — The Times
Some interesting and contrasting representations of personal risk acceptance and liability here.
“If you have one clock … you are peaceful and have no worries,” says Van Baak, fingering a length of cable connecting two of his machines. “If you have two clocks … you start asking, ‘What time is it, really?’”
– Tom Van Baak, in Amateur Time Hackers Play With Atomic Clocks at Home, Quinn Norton
Let’s all just accept that John Hodgman is currently guest-blogging at BoingBoing. Hey, these things happen.
But I’m unable to overlook the fact that, in the portrait of JHK accompanying his first post, he’s posing with crystal skull vodka.
I’ve cleared a bit of a radio back-up. Fresh audio: last week’s music show, a Human Highway tribute from the day after that, and this week’s show are now up on the radio page. Yesterday’s talk show is on the Hot in Here page. Lots of radios for you.
The stock market continues to “find the bottom”, as they’ve been saying. As I make it, we’re now at around 2003 levels. Remember 2003? My god, that was terrible.
Mexican marijuana cartels sully US forests, parks — Tracie Cone, AP
‘In the meantime, the only cleanup is done by volunteers. On Tuesday, the nonprofit High Sierra Trail Crew, founded to improve access to public lands, plans to take 30 people deep into the Sequoia National Forest to carry out miles of drip irrigation pipe, tons of human garbage, volatile propane canisters, and bags and bottles of herbicides and pesticides.
“If the people of California knew what was going on out there, they’d be up in arms about this,” said Shane Krogen, the nonprofit’s executive director. “Helicopters full of dope are like body counts in the Vietnam War. What does it really mean?”
Last year, law enforcement agents uprooted nearly five million plants in California, nearly a half million in Kentucky and 276,000 in Washington state as the development of hybrid plants has expanded the range of climates marijuana can tolerate.
“People light up a joint, and they have no idea the amount of environmental damage associated with it,” said Cicely Muldoon, deputy regional director of the Pacific West Region of the National Park Service.’
Of course, there is a simple solution to this problem.
The stock market suffers on. Is it that big a deal? You’ve seen the graphs of the Dow Jones Industrial plunging off into “here be dragons” territory. Here’s the same graph, except since 1970:
(source)
In that context, it looks like we’re doing just fine.
Except I suppose that the financial industry seems to be capable of enormous leaps of threshold logic. This is the system that is predicated on ‘if you’re not growing you’re crashing’. So perhaps a marginal dip really is enough to send the whole house of cards floating to the desk. Who knows? My guess: nobody much.
It’s time for Q&A with hughstimson.org.
Q: What is drawpoint?
A: For the answer, we turn to Natural Resources Canada’s Narrow Vein Mining Research Project:
“A drawpoint is a horizontal plan located at the base of a stope that is generally the link between the stope and the haulage drift allowing recuperation of the broken ore.”
While we’re on the subject of the passing of lives and pool hustling, a reminder to read Jump the Shark.
Paul Newman died. I didn’t know him, but I enjoyed his movies. Nobody’s Fool was one of my favourites for years.
I’ve been watching The Hustler this Saturday night. It makes me think of watching whatever great film was on Saturday Night at the Movies, on TVO, back when it was on. Which made me want to mention Saturday Night at the Movies and it’s host Elwy Yost on the blog. But then I remembered that I already had.
So here’s to Paul Newman and Elwy Yost. Cheers to you guys.
Somehow I missed this swashbuckling undebate between Niall Ferguson and Peter Schwartz on the general topic of: is the future screwed? Schwartz (see video here, in which he claims we will mostly all die from sudden global climate change-induced violence long before peak oil is an issue) is the optomist, Niall Ferguson is concerned things might be uncomfortable for us.
Alternative histories, finance, evolutionary biology, cosmology, corn syrup, Hashemites, diesel-shitting microbes, China, complexity, dead friends and imaginary ones. And laughs! And if you really need hard futurism, Schwartz (back in April) predicts substantial rebalancing of the the finance system within weeks. It’s a corker. Summary here, mp3 here, podcast here for the whole seminar series, if you wish to descend the full rabbit hole (highly, highly recommended). Don’t miss the Q&A after.
“Not Life of Brian, Meaning of Life. Sorry. Jet lag.” — Niall Ferguson
Google is holding a “Scientific Applications with Google Earth Conference” here in Ann Arbor. Lord knows I’ve been using the hell out of Google Earth for my scientific applications, I figure I should go.
To register as a student costs $20. Not bad for a 2-day scientific conference! However, the fee can only be made through Google Checkout and
“Payment requires a Google account. If you do not have a Google account you can use a gmail address or you can create a new account using a preferred email address.”
It takes balls or obliviousness to tell scientists they have to dig themselves into a proprietary finance-information system before they can attend a public scientific conference. This interlocking ecosystem of Google-only services is really starting to freak me out, man. Did Gates and Ballmer the college drop-outs once promise each other they would never be evil? Because Microsoft is nothing compared to the information and tool ownership Google is scaling up to.
