Author Archives: dr.hypercube

Rattus norvegicus

Posted on by

Rats are fascinating. A few species of rat have colonized niches provided by agrarian and industrial human societies; I blogged earlier in the year about the Polynesian rat and Easter Island – now it’s the wharf rat (my favorite name for R. norvegicus) and England’s turn. So… here’s a rat-catcher’s link farm:

…the only advantage to the mongoose being that all the Rats it kills it will bring back dead to it’s habitation, and that stops the dead Rats from smelling under the floors.

*

*

Update (11/29) – a great post on Patrick Burn’s site – R. norvegicus prevents plague!

Site outages

Posted on by

Occasionally you may have trouble getting at my blog. I host the site myself – at home – so when the power goes out for a while, or my cable goes out or any number of other things happen -> the blog goes dark. Keep checking – sooner or later I’ll be back.

The DoaMNH technical mini-FAQ:

Q: Why host the site yourself?

A: Um… seemed like a good idea at the time? Actually, I like the feeling of accomplishment I get – additionally, throwing WordPress software on the server I was already running was not a big deal.

Q:Why is it slow?

A: Because US broadband providers don’t get it. They think of residential customers as consumers – passive web surfers – rather than folks who both use and produce info. Bandwidth inbound (from the web to me) is approx. 8Mb/s; outbound (my blog to your browser) is about 750 Kb/s.

Q: So what are you running?

A: From the bottom up:

  • Mini-ITX based server (low power consumption) – VIA EPIA SP13000 mobo w/ 512M of RAM and 2 120Gb SATA drives. Parts from Logic Supply.
  • SME Server Version 7 – a great, easy to use Linux server distribution. It’s absolutely perfect for a home server.
  • WordPress 2.x blogging software with a bunch of plug-ins.

Probably more than you wanted to know.

Storm at Saturn’s south pole

Posted on by

This doesn’t need any comment from me…

A movie taken by Cassini’s camera over a three-hour period reveals winds around Saturn’s south pole blowing clockwise at 550 kilometers (350 miles) per hour. The camera also saw the shadow cast by a ring of towering clouds surrounding the pole, and two spiral arms of clouds extending from the central ring. These ring clouds, 30 to 75 kilometers (20 to 45 miles) above those in the center of the storm, are two to five times taller than the clouds of thunderstorms and hurricanes on Earth.

Eye-wall clouds are a distinguishing feature of hurricanes on Earth. They form where moist air flows inward across the ocean’s surface, rising vertically and releasing a heavy rain around an interior circle of descending air that is the eye of the storm itself. Though it is uncertain whether such moist convection is driving Saturn’s storm, the dark “eye” at the pole, the eye-wall clouds and the spiral arms together indicate a hurricane-like system. *

Rockets and some autobiography

Posted on by

A few days ago, I indulged my curiosity by doing a little web searching for unrealized spacecraft designs – I was motivated by having read Project Orion recently. The Orion designs relied on nuclear impulse power; they would chuck a shaped-charge nuclear bomb behind them, touch it off, and absorb the energy using a pusher plate, shock absorbers and a massive ship/payload. While noodling around I ran across a Nazi secret weapon project I’d never heard of before: Dr. Eugen Sanger’s Amerika Orbital bomber.

Reading about how this thing was to be launched, all I could think of was my favorite childhood TV show. A bit of background – the year I was to start school, my family moved to Newport, Wales for a year so instead of first grade, it was Infant’s One for me. Lest you think that I spent my time in Wales zoned out in front of the tube – well, it was different then (and there). If I recall correctly – no guarantees – there was one channel, it wasn’t broadcasting all the time and a significant portion of the programming was in Welsh. My time in Newport cemented my love of the outdoors and started my bibliomania; my teacher gave me a copy of this book as a going away present when we left to return to Phoenix (AZ). There was one thing on the telly (couldn’t resist) that I loved: Gerry Anderson’s Fireball XL5. If you’re not familiar with him, Mr. Anderson is the guy behind Supermarionation and shows like Thunderbirds and Stingray. Fireball XL5 was one of his earlier efforts; the eponymous rocketship was launched by – you guessed it – being propelled down a long track by a rocket sled. Convergent evolution or had Anderson or one of his people heard of Sanger’s work? You got me. I can tell you that World War II was still echoing in Great Britain in the early sixties in a way it definitely was not in the US. I started building plastic model airplane kits (Airfix!) while we were in Wales – Spitfires and Lancaster bombers were all I remember – no Vulcans, nothing contemporary. Who knows, but in any event, a good excuse for me to turn the clock back. I don’t miss the school uniform though!

Rosamond Purcell (and Ricky Jay)

Posted on by

The Athanasius Kircher Society gives us a head-up on a very nice slide show on Slate devoted to the photographs of Rosamond Purcell. I realized while looking at the photographs that I’d seen a couple of the images before, without paying enough attention to the person making the art – I won’t make that mistake again (I hope) w/ Ms. Purcell’s work. One place you can go to see more is the Museum of Jurassic Technology’s exhibit of Ricky Jay’s decaying dice. Enjoy!

*

Update – Purcell links abound! Here’s one from the Boston Globe. (via BoingBoing)

Word of the day

Posted on by

Flopsweat – n. Theater. nervous perspiration caused by fear of failure before an audience. From “Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, Volume 1, A-G” by J.E. Lighter, Random House, New York, 1994. This earliest citation in this reference is: 1966 Susann “Valley of the Dolls” 292: The applause had been deafening on her entrance, but after ten minutes the air was heavy with “flop sweat.”

OK, let’s use it in a sentence (this line is what made flopsweat today’s word). Via the apostate Balloon Juice blog,

Unsurprisingly, practically everybody involved with the glorious clusterf*ck in Iraq has switched into desperate damage-control mode. Michael Leeden’s [sic] personal dodge (Supported the invasion? You must mean some other Michael Leeden) is particularly funny for its mix of mendacity and flopsweat.”

A Couple Good Links from Japan

Posted on by

Very light posting recently – any time I’m not working or sleeping, I’m out in the woods, chasing one thing or another. To confirm my continued existence I offer the following links:

Catching skyfish. I get the strong feeling this is more than a little tongue in cheek; it’s a heck of a lot more interesting than the latest day-trading or real estate millionaire video come-on.

Japanomie – this documentary on hikikomori is interesting (give it time to load) – after making me frown and smile it finally brought out the crabby guy in me. “Kids today! Bah! Nothing there that a goddam haircut and a job won’t fix.” I found the film starting here and wandering around here.

Back to the woods (maybe I can catch a skyfish with my new spoodle)…

Humboldt’s parrot

Posted on by

Very interesting post at the Kircher Society web site – it’s almost impossible to describe without giving everything away, so click through. The story reminds me of a children’s book I just read: The Last Giants. There are similar themes – destruction of the discovered world and the marks it leaves on those that live on. Not the point of the post, but I can recommend Mr. Place’s ‘Giants’ book without reservation – a good story and wonderful illustrations (that’s Monsieur, not Mister).

Update (6/14/09) – The Kircher Society web site is gone; I re-linked above to a snapshot in the Wayback Machine. Just in case, here’s the post:

In 1804, when the Prussian naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt returned from his five-year expedition to Central and South America, he brought back this poignant anecdote about a dead language once spoken by an annihilated tribe that had been kept alive by a single feathered linguist:

“It is to be supposed that the last family of Atures did not die out until a long time afterwards: since at Maypures – bizarrely – there still survives an old parrot that nobody, say the natives, can understand, because it speaks only the language of the Atures.”

Humboldt recorded the 40 words spoken by the parrot, the only remnant of the dead Ature language. In 1997, with the help of a linguist and a bird behaviorist, artist Rachel Berwick painstakingly taught a group of parrots to speak those 40 words, and exhibited them in a cylindrical aviary made of transluscent plastic.

The story of Humboldt’s Parrot is recounted in Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages by Mark Abley.

Incidentally, Charles Darwin wrote, “I shall never forget that my whole life is due to having read and reread as a youth” Humboldt’s Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent During the Years 1799 to 1804.

Reasons to be Fearful (Part 3)

Posted on by

The juice of the carrot, the smile of the parrot
A little drop of claret – anything that rocks
Elvis and Scotty, days when I ain’t spotty,
Sitting on the potty – curing small pox
– Ian Drury and the Blockheads – “Reasons to be Cheerful (Part 3)”

Another NPR inspired rantlet… I was listening to W/E Edition yesterday morning and the host, Scott Simon, delivered a commentary inspired by the recent plane crash in New York. His points, if I understand correctly, are that one cannot be fearful all the time and that in spite of fear, life goes on. I’d like to make a couple points of my own in response to one assertion and one unstated assumption.

The assertion I’d like to counter is that objective assesment of risk can’t or shouldn’t inform our actions.

A lot of people try to cite cite statististical arguments to aquit us of fear reminding us that the statistical chances of our lives being lost in a terrorist attack is (sic) small and yet the statistical chance that any terrorist act in a familiar landscape will infiltrate our fears is overwhelming. But statistics can seem an unreal basis in which to live your life. Would anyone get married if they thought too much about the fact that more than 50% of all marriages in the United States end in divorce? Would Derek Jeter ever stride up to home plate if he focussed on the statistical fact that even he stood only a third of a chance of sucess?

To dispense with Mr. Simon’s Jeter question first – I’m sure he would. A .333 batting average in the Majors is, I believe, respectable (I don’t know what Derek Jeter’s batting stats are like – I used ‘a third of a chance’ as my benchmark) and what is the down side? He walks back to the dugout. Does he step to the plate expecting to strike out? I’m sure he doesn’t, but the reason he doesn’t has a lot more to do with sports psychology than it does statistics. A hit one in three times will more than likely continue to earn Mr. Jeter buckets of cash, while a hit less frequently will not change Jeter’s desire to try, but will degrade his chances of being allowed to do so (can you send someone like Derek Jeter back to the minors?). The marriage question is also ineffective as an indictment of statistics – at least as far as I’m concerned. The success rate of marriages in the US can’t be news to anyone and yet folks continue to get married. Is it because they don’t pay sufficient attention to their chances? I doubt it – there are a huge number of reasons to get married – emotional and financial – that overwhelm the risk consideration. The money quote is, “But statistics can seem an unreal basis in which to live your life.” There is some truth to this – people are bad at estimating odds and payoffs, so statistical risk evaluation often tells us things that are counter-intuitive (see this link for Daniel Gilbert on “How to do the right thing every time”). Does this mean that we should reject statistics and objective risk analysis? I’d suggest that that way Truthiness lies – “my gut tells me different” is not a good reason for rejecting information.

The second unstated assumption that I’d like to challenge is that this state of affairs dropped out of the sky – there are no groups that benefit from the current Panic of the Month Club. Let’s look at Mr. Simon’s list:

…cancers, treacherous car suspensions, transfats, lasers blinding airplanes, AIDS blighting continents, asbestos, hypertension, drug addiction, drunk driving, bone spurs, swine flu, christmas tree eletrocutions, cholesterol, high speed car chases, category 5 hurricanes, mad cows, choking on chicken bones…

Missing of course is E. coli on spinach >grin<. The kindest word I can think of to describe the list is heterogenous. I mean, bone spurs vs. AIDS? Lasers blinding airplanes vs. Cat. 5 hurricanes? What thread ties most of this together? Wall-to-wall media attention (I admit to missing some of them - the great bone spur crisis of ought two sailed right by me). Crises and panic get attention = viewers = revenue. Rather than try to elucidate this connection and think about what's really worth worrying about and working on (strong Public Health system, anyone?), we're encouraged to accept the whole list as the way of the world, suck it up and get past it to, I guess, resignation. Sorry, I won't play. Scott - A copy of Beyond Fear, and occasional reading of Bruce Schneier’s Cryptogram (in the blogroll) might give you a better basis on which to build the next commentary.

treacherous car suspensions, transfats,
lasers blinding airplanes, AIDS blighting continents,
asbestos, hypertension, drug addiction
– Scott Simon “Reasons to be Fearful (Part 3)” aka “A Familiar Chill In New York”

A bit of grin and bear it, a bit of come and share it
You’re welcome, we can spare it – yellow socks
Too short to be haughty, too nutty to be naughty
Going on 40 – no electric shocks
– Ian Drury and the Blockheads – ibid.

note – I transcribed the quotes from Mr. Simon’s commentaries and am responsible for any errors. In the E.coli paragraph I’m deliberately ignoring another powerful group whose hold on government is tied to keeping the populace afraid (any guesses?).