If the climate was a bank they would already have saved it.
I came across this nice animation showing what the sky would look like from various cities if Earth had rings like Saturn:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UT2sQ7KIQ-E
Just think of how profoundly different our history would have been with those in the sky. My first thought was that the old mariners' problem of determining longitude would never have existed - just look at the rings, night or day. It would be pretty obvious that the Earth was round (though that was figured out several centuries B.C.). I wonder how they would have been incorporated into religious mythologies.
There is a great JavaScript library for displaying source code on web pages called SyntaxHighlighter. It lacked a module for R, so I wrote one. It's available here:
Hopefully I'll actually create an actual "code" section to my web site. I have so much code sitting on my computers that I really should put a lot of it online.
Embarrassingly enough, I don't know how to even display an example of this new whizzy software on my blog! Sad. Head over to the other page to see an example.
Any comments or examples of use of the R brush are welcome!
I have a couple of shirts that need alterations, so I went out today to take care of them. I know three places near me within a few blocks. The first was one was closed. I walked to the other two, but found they too were closed on Sundays. By the time I walked home I sadly realized that I had just taken my clothes out for a walk.
I get spam. (My guess is that you do to.) Every once in a while, one will catch my eye and make me laugh. I got this one today:
I loved the idea of the FBI delivering lottery winnings. I imagine a door literally bursting open as two FBI agents wearing dark glasses leap inside:
"ATTENTION SIR WE ARE HERE TO INFORM YOU THAT YOU HAVE WON A LOTTERY PLEASE DON'T MAKE ANY SUDDEN MOVEMENTS, KEEP YOUR HANDS WHERE WE CAN SEE THEM AND CONGRATULATIONS!!"
"Thanks. Please get your wingtips off my throat."
If you're curious, I won $800K. This was discovered by the "Intelligence Monitoring Network System", a system presumably built to monitor lottery winnings. Further, the name of the "Agent in-charge" is FRED MBA. I'm guessing he was really proud of his degree. Maybe I should change my name to DEMITRI PHD. Finally, the FBI was kind enough to leave me a contact phone number, with a country code in Nigeria. That must be where the FBI Lottery Division field office is.
Apparently I like the idea of having a blog far more than actually writing in one. I'm not wholly sure why that is. One aim is to write entries that at least I'd be interested in reading, and the percentage there isn't as high as I'd like. So as I try to get this thing off the ground (again), I'll probably play with different styles and see what happens.
My last post was motivated by a pet peeve of mine, that is, memes that are spread far and wide and are factually incorrect. For some things, people just don't know better or else they've heard something repeated many times. ("Give your kids sugar and it will make them hyperactive!" Wrong.) It also makes for tedious conversation. I challenge you to go through Thanksgiving dinner this year and not hear this exchange: "Man, I'm sleepy!" "Oh, it's all that tryptophan in the turkey!" It's not. At all. But as a scientist, I don't want to be like those people that just repeat any claim they hear ("you lose most of your body heat through your head!") without actually providing a reference. But that takes work, and that takes time, and... nothing gets written. So I'm going to go on this principle from here on out - if I make a claim on something, know that I did my due diligence, and if someone can prove to me otherwise, I'll happily correct it. So maybe more will get written now.
Finally, just one random comment. The Democrats just passed their health bill in the House, but in the process gave anti-choicers a huge victory. Seriously, if the Dems can't get a majority and keep their values, then what's the point? I think this was a huge mistake on their part and they should have found some stick to keep the "conservative" Dems (whatever that means) in line rather than allow those few to do the opposite. It's an incredible disappointment. And I don't want to hear "oh, it's for the greater good, the bill got passed." You don't trade away an individual's rights "for the greater good". It's a slippery slope.
One thing I find amazing is how much "common knowledge" is just plain wrong, but since it is repeated over and over it's taken as fact. A lot of these things sound reasonable, so we don't investigate the matter any further. It can be a little disturbing to learn just how many things we assume are true simply aren't.
I'm going to post examples of such things as I come across them. I welcome any corrections, but will happily ignore corrections that do not cite credible sources. (Hey, what do you want, I'm a scientist.)
Here are a few things that are wrong:
“Why are we bringing it back?” asked Bishop Nicholas A. DiMarzio of Brooklyn, who has embraced the move. “Because there is sin in the world.”"And cash," he added, "buttloads of cash."
You cannot buy one — the church outlawed the sale of indulgences in 1857 — but charitable contributions, combined with other acts, can help you earn one.Well, ok, not cash. But all of the things that cash can buy.
According to church teaching, even after sinners are absolved in the confessional and say their Our Fathers or Hail Marys as penance, they still face punishment after death, in Purgatory before they can enter heaven. In exchange for certain prayers, devotions or pilgrimages in special years, a Catholic can receive an indulgence, which reduces or erases that punishment instantly, with no formal ceremony or sacrament.I love how absolutely no construct of man can escape red tape, bureaucracy, and loopholes.
There is a limit of one plenary indulgence per sinner per day.So act now! Supplies are limited! Indulgences at these low low prices can't last long. Indulge before noon tomorrow, and get two weeks off Purgatory for the price of one!
Among liberal Catholic theologians, the return of the indulgence seems to be more of a curiosity than a cause for alarm. “Personally, I think we’re beyond the time when indulgences mean very much,” said the Rev. Richard P. McBrien, a professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame who supports the ordination of women and the right of priests to marry.Sure sucks for those poor bastards who paid so much money to the church before 1857.
I don't know, depends on how many years you get for lustful thoughts. At that age, they were probably just barely treading water, Purgatory-time-wise.Octavia Andrade, 64, a retired secretary, laughed as she recalled a time when children would race through the rosary repeatedly to get as many indulgences as they could — usually in increments of 5 or 10 years — “as if we needed them, then.”
I can't possibly see how that could be a bad thing. I hear the Inquisition involved quite a lot of fervor. I wonder where the Crusades fall on the ferver-o-meter.Still, she supports their reintroduction. “Anything old coming back, I’m in favor of it,” she said. “More fervor is a good thing.”
"I mean, I’m not saying it is necessarily wrong,” she said. “But I had always figured theywere going to let this fade into the background, to be honest. What does it mean to get ‘time off’ in Purgatory? What is ‘five years’ in terms of eternity?”Kind of depends on what's playing on the TV in reception, doesn't it?
Apparently someone is going to write a new Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy novel, with approval from Douglas Adams' widow.
This is just so wrong...