Funmurphys: the Blog

The Triumph of Hope over Experience

Archive for September, 2006

Cool Map Sites

Sep 29

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Links | No Comments

I’ve always loved maps. When I was a kid we had this Encyclopedia Britannica atlas that was simply beautiful, although the paper was so stiff it gave you wicked paper cuts. But on the web, you don’t have to worry about paper cuts.

So if you’ve gotten tired of Mapquest or Google maps, it’s time to move on to the maps at The Global Distribution of Poverty.

When you’re done there, you can check out all the maps NASA’s Hurricane Data Portal.

Maybe you would be interested in a map of early modern London. Maybe not.

If you are into real estate, how about Trulia or Zillow

Want to make your own map? Try Frappr.

Want to find out where all the historical markers are? Then use The Historical Marker Database, or course.

Or how about USGS?

Or how about the the Library of Congress Map Vault?

Or how about a site whose name says it all, Worldmap.org. If you can’t find it there, can you find it anywhere? OK, it’s concerned with Christian missions so you can find maps dealing with Christianity there.

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The Driver Makes The Car

Sep 29

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Technology | No Comments

Have airbags and anti-lock brakes made us safer?  The answer is no, according to a study by Dr. Mannering of Purdue University. And the reason is that people adjust their driving behavior to the safer cars:

The researchers used a series of mathematical equations in “probit models” to calculate accident probabilities based on the motor vehicle data and actual driving records. Using the data, the model enabled researchers to calculate the probabilities of whether drivers in different age and demographic categories would be involved in an accident. The models showed that the safety systems did not affect the probability of having an accident or injury.The study represents the first attempt to test the offset hypothesis using “disaggregate data,” or following the same households over time instead of using more general “aggregate” data from the population at large.

“By using disaggregate data, we have added to the credibility that our findings actually reflect offsetting behavior,” Mannering said. “And the 2005 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration fatality data released last month indicate that fatalities per mile driven in the United States have actually increased, which adds some aggregate validation of our findings.”

I’m one of those codgers who grumble about how when I was kid we didn’t even have seat belts, and all the other safety features we take for granted, and somehow survived childhood. Now I’m on firm scientific footing when I do so.

If we make such an adjustment without even thinking while driving a car, think of all the other stuff we simply adjust to so that we are keeping something like risk constant, or even increasing risk while thinking we are lowering it.

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If A Tree Is Not In The Forest, Can You Hear It Fall?

Sep 29

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Science | No Comments

What tree doesn’t like a forest? The Live Oak, which apparently is the introvert of the tree family. A study of the live oak by University of Florida researchers reveals that live oaks are under pressure in Florida (an no doubt elsewhere) from the encroachment of other trees:

It is an irony of nature that the successes of reforestation and urban forestry threaten live oaks, which in the past maintained the elbow room they needed from logging, cattle grazing and frequent fires, said Putz, whose work is published in the June issue of Forest Ecology and Management. “We are confusing our natural savanna heritage with forested landscapes and the tragedy is that the forest is killing live oaks,” he said. “If we allow other trees to grow up too close to the live oak, the live oak will die. Our research clearly establishes this fate in both rural and suburban landscapes.”…

Based on these findings, Putz said he believes more than half of the live oaks in the city of Gainesville alone are in danger of being destroyed by encroaching trees, a process that can take anywhere from 10 to 30 years and is most rapid in the suburbs where lawns are fertilized.

The problem is widespread because suburban sprawl and forest expansion are threatening savannas and open-canopied woodlands in many parts of the world, Putz said.

“The trees of these savannas, from the oaks of California and Europe to the acacias of Africa and the legumes of tropical America, are all likely to suffer when forest trees encroach on their crowns,” he said. ‘In the U.S. alone, savanna is the natural vegetation all across the coastal plain from Virginia to Texas.”

Saving live oaks sometimes means having to kill other trees, which can be expensive, but preserving a single live oak can add as much as $30,000 to the value of a house, Putz said. Furthermore, having a live oak nearby is good protection against hurricane damage.

I have to admit it’s counter-intuitive for me to consider the growth of forest can come at the expense of a particular tree species, or to contemplate killing one set of trees to save another.

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The Four Ecumenical Truisms

Sep 28

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Fun | No Comments

It is important for those of all faiths to recognize these four religious truths:

1. Muslims do not recognize Jews as God’s chosen people.

2. Jews do not recognize Jesus as the Messiah.

3. Protestants do not recognize the Pope as the Leader of the Christian world.

4. Baptists do not recognize each other at Hooters.

An Ancient Radiation That Haunts Dismembered Constellations

Sep 27

Posted by Sean Murphy in Quotes | 2 Comments

In God We Trust, All Others Bring Data

attributed to W. Edwards Deming

Possibly a riff on “In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash”

The rule of ABCD: Always Be Collecting Data
I can’t find a good source for this one, I heard it years ago in a presentation but not all of the content from the pre-Internet years has found its way into Google’s cache. If you have a source, please add a comment.

from Brick by Ben Folds Five

As weeks went by
It showed that she was not fine
They told me son its time to tell the truth and she broke down and
I broke down
Cause I was tired of lying

All this time I thought it was about a couple in their twenties, with the girl dying of some early onset cancer, with “They” being her doctors. But according to Frank Maynard’s original Ben Folds Five Website

On the record, Ben wasn’t much help […] Since the song became so popular, it’s been clarified that the song is indeed about a guy taking his girlfriend to the clinic for an abortion, and how he handles the situation. […] he has stated (on the syndicated radio show “Loveline”) that it was based on his experiences in the 12th grade, and that he had spoken with his girlfriend at the time and she said she didn’t mind if Ben talked about it. In the article by David Daley in the February 1998 CMJ New Music Monthly, Ben says “It’s the story of my senior year of high school, basically. More so, it’s about the fact that it happens and there are emotional byproducts.”

And, in closing…

‘A,’ ‘B,’ ‘C.’ ‘A,’ always, ‘B,’ be, ‘C,’ closing. Always be closing.

from Blake’s speech in Glengarry Glen Ross (screenplay by David Mamet)

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World’s Smallest Gas Turbine Engine

Sep 26

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Technology | No Comments

MIT professors are trying to put a gas turbine engine on a chip. No, not because they are disciples of Schumacher, but because they are trying to build a better mousetrap, err, battery. The DOD is interested because they want to be able to provide soldiers plenty of power in the wilderness, or at least in difficult to supply situations.

Their microengine is made of six silicon wafers, piled up like pancakes and bonded together. Each wafer is a single crystal with its atoms perfectly aligned, so it is extremely strong. To achieve the necessary components, the wafers are individually prepared using an advanced etching process to eat away selected material. When the wafers are piled up, the surfaces and the spaces in between produce the needed features and functions….

The MIT team has now used this process to make all the components needed for their engine, and each part works. Inside a tiny combustion chamber, fuel and air quickly mix and burn at the melting point of steel. Turbine blades, made of low-defect, high-strength microfabricated materials, spin at 20,000 revolutions per second — 100 times faster than those in jet engines. A mini-generator produces 10 watts of power. A little compressor raises the pressure of air in preparation for combustion. And cooling (always a challenge in hot microdevices) appears manageable by sending the compression air around the outside of the combustor.

This is one reason I like engineers – when they have fun, we all benefit.

Oddities Abound

Sep 26

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Links | No Comments

If you think I’m obsessed with oddities today, you need to check this guy out, who links to a toilet seat museum and an MIT report on the effectiveness of tin foil hats. Indeed.

Diabetes, Not Obesity Kills

Sep 26

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Science | No Comments

I count this as good news/bad news – obesity by itself carries no extra risk of early death, but diabetes sure is a killer. Since obesity is a significant risk factor in diabetes, and being overweight is no picnic, don’t start ignoring your size. And in light of the last post about how scaring people into action is ineffective, this quote makes double sense:

“Telling an overweight person that they either need to lose weight or they will die is the wrong message,” he says. “There is increasing evidence that aggressively treating diabetes and other risk factors that go along with obesity, like cholesterol and high blood pressure, is even more important than losing weight.”

Not everyone is convinced:

But JoAnn Manson, M.D., of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, doesn’t buy the idea that diabetes alone is responsible for the increased risk of early death in people who are obese. Manson led the team which reanalyzed the CDC data. She tells WebMD that there is plenty of good evidence implicating obesity in death from cardiovascular disease and several types of cancer, as well as diabetes.”There are clearly pathways through which obesity increases the risk of death that do not involve type 2 diabetes,” she says.

That’s the beauty of science — it’s only settled once you’re dead.

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Read This Blog Or Else!

Sep 26

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Science | No Comments

“You can’t scare people into getting fit or going green” says the Economic and Social Research Council. No word on if you can scare people into voting Republican. No rebuttle from the Catholic church or Jewish mothers, either.

The team identified 33 distinct strategies for changing intentions and behaviour across the 129 different studies. The most frequently used strategies provided general information, details of consequences and opportunities for comparison. Yet the most effective strategies were to prompt practice, set specific goals, generate self-talk, agree a behavioural contract and prompt review of behavioural goals. The two least effective strategies involved arousing fear and causing people to regret if they acted in a particular fashion.

Gee whiz, sounds like all that metrics stuff – “What you can’t measure, you can’t manage” might be true after all.

Actually, I’m not sure how they got from the most effective strategy for a personal trainer to you can’t scare people into adopting your position. I guess it ‘s the difference between you can’t scare people into actually doing something about the environment but it’s easy to get them to pay lip service to the environment, you know people who natter on about what you can do while doing nothing themselves.

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Software That Can Sort Facts From Opinions

Sep 25

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Technology | No Comments

File this in the category of too good to be true: “A new research program by a Cornell computer scientist, in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh and University of Utah, aims to teach computers to scan through text and sort opinion from fact.”

That will revolutionize the pundit business. I’m thinking lots of people will be surprised to discover just how much they read is opinion, not fact. And not just on op ed pages, either. But I’m not hopeful that the tack the researchers are taking will be able to measure anything beside how well a writer disguises his opinion as fact:

The new research will use machine-learning algorithms to give computers examples of text expressing both fact and opinion and teach them to tell the difference. A simplified example might be to look for phrases like “according to” or “it is believed.” Ironically, Cardie said, one of the phrases most likely to indicate opinion is “It is a fact that …”The work also will seek to determine the sources of information cited by a writer. “We’re making sure that any information is tagged with a confidence. If it’s low confidence, it’s not useful information,” Cardie added.

So it’s not like they are actually going to check the writing against facts; they are just going to look at how the information is presented, which means that ironically if you present opinion as fact the programs will take your word for it and flag it as fact. If you are careful and present your opinions as such, then the program will pick up on that and flag it as opinion.

In other words, the researchers are writing a program that uses the writer’s opinion to sort opinion from fact in the writers work. Won’t that be a great help. No word on a computerized sarcasm detector.