Thane Plambeck

Selected news story titles at CNN.com today

Boy went for bubble gum, met a killer
Evicted homeowner who shot herself dies
5-year-old's beheading came 'out of the blue'
Grieving mother:  'They cut his heart out'

* * * *
Why do I go to this site?  I have no idea. 

TAKE ME TO THE KITTENS.

via loq on the npl list

A fool, a tool, a pool: loopalootaloofa!

From a recent Schwarzenegger press conference

GOVERNOR: We had a big industrial revolution. We didn't know any better, and we verschmutzt the world. And now we have global warming.

Is math a science?

The grand prize winner of this year's Intel Science Talent Search was math wizard Eric K. Larson, 17, of Eugene, Ore. His mathematics project, "The Classification of Certain Fusion Categories," garnered $100,000.

Here's a paper that describes the work

http://arxiv.org/abs/0812.1603

This got me thinking again about the question:  Is Math a Science?

Fortunately, there's plenty of good writing about the subject on the web, so I don't have to think about at all, really.  This is good (scroll quite a bit on the page, which has the kind of crummy formatting that makes a person think, ugh, I don't want to read this):

For starters, does mathematics even follow the scientific method?  Observation, hypothesis, experimentation, testing, verification?

In what may come as a surprise to some, yes, it does. This is where the prevalent style does a disservice to an accurate perception of research mathematics. A mathematician engaging in research does not produce a statement for a theorem and proceed to prove it. She is usually feeling her way in the unknown as much as any scientist. She will consider some specific examples (observations), and try to see if they have a property or not. She will formulate some questions, both general and specific, and try to see how she can answer them for specific cases. She may then attempt a general statement (hypothesis), and proceed to attempt a proof (experimentation); sometimes, if that fails, she will attempt to construct a counterexample (falsification and testing). This process continues until the mathematician finally obtains an argument establishing her hypothesis, or she manages to disprove it (or, finding herself unable to do either, sets it aside and tries something else...)

Ozzie on guard

Ozzie on guard, originally uploaded by thane.

Upbeat economic thought du jour

Suppose Greedy Bank (Cayman Islands) owes $2 trillion it can never hope to repay to Loathsome Brothers (New York). Then Loathsome Brothers owes $2 trillion to Pink Gin Partners (Singapore), which in turn owe $2 trillion… to Greedy Bank. Viewed individually, as they are at the moment, the debts look catastrophic. Viewed collectively many of them will presumably offset.

From "Keeping your Money Out of The Black Hole" (WSJ; Brett Arends)

Narwhal Quiz

As posed by Owen (5th grader)

1. Where does the Narwhal live? [ Indian Ocean, Pacific Ocean, or Arctic Ocean? ]
2. Does the female have the tusk, or the male, or both?  [ Female, Male, or both? ]
3. Where does the tusk come from?  [ Between the eyes, tooth that grew, or Chin bone? ]    

Miscellaneous

1) Having dodged most of the current "market downturn," I'm spending more time than usual trying to figure out what do next.  All those people who suggest "read the fine print?"  Well, those people are right.  For the moment, the doctor has decided to stop trying to figure out what's going to happen (if anything) to his favorite patient, the marketplace for California municipal bonds.  Is the patient ill?  What is the prognosis?  I can't figure it out.  It all comes down to the question:  if I have a dollar, what should I do with it, if I'm not planning to spend it, just now?  I don't think it's obvious what the best answer to that question is.  It used to be that there were several completely satisfactory answers to that question.  Now, not so many.  Hence the research and experimentation I'm doing, and it's taking some time.

2) Multiple multiple-homicides in the news:  I can't keep up with all the killing.  If only we all carried a personal sidearm, like in the Wild West, we could read more about "shootouts," and not about massacres.  But then there would be plenty of shootouts, I think, and a larger total body count, so maybe that's not such a good idea.  I miss Mike Royko's "Gun Owner of the Year" award.  There is an inevitable moment in the newspaper reporting of a multiple homicide where the police are finally engaged in the hunt for the killer or (more often) are trying to confirm that he's (and he's always a he), has already committed suicide.  The "shootout" concept, which is more comforting and meaningful than the idea of students being killed (say) in a school at random, is where we want these stories to lead, and they inevitably do, to their depressing conclusion. 

Head In The Game

IMG_8147, originally uploaded by thane.

imminent-stalemate

imminent-stalemate, originally uploaded by thane.

As white in this hopeless "1 minute" Internet Chess Club position, with 1 second on my clock, and 4 seconds on my opponent's clock, play continued

1 h4   d1=Q stalemate

No problemo.

Engraved on the collar of a dog

I am his Highness's dog at Kew; pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?

(alexander pope?)

Laser-like sunlight in my office

Laser-like sunlight in my office, originally uploaded by thane.

Hanky-panky at Flickr?

Clicking around on Flickr as usual, I got some pages served to me with crap like this at the top:

lGZfLXbw2iePnp2H6zeOgbO6XErEjlR6QJZoVY8-',
 'yahoo_addressbook_read_secret' => 'Hq4iZtK.ohml3rPyAXU.byKnNOQK2QE1qKX_imzk-',
 'yahoo_addressbook_write_secret' => 'kg.B046_P2BFYTueDDasYAE0j0Afo8K2htJWrDj0-',
 'windows_live_secret' => '$$$$',
)
?>

Browser bug, hack, or sunspots?

Added later:  Some forensics

Headless Halloween Scarecrow in Neighbor's Garbage

Headless Halloween Scarecrow in Neighbor's Garbage, originally uploaded by thane.

I was walking the dog in the near-dark and stopped to pick up a sock she dropped out of her mouth. I felt something brushing against my arm

IT WAS A HEADLESS HALLOWEEN SCARECROW STUFFED IN THEIR GARBAGE

(cue psycho music)

Basketball

THANE:  You know, I think I'd be interested in just about any basketball game.  I don't care who's playing.  They could be professionals, college players, kindergarteners, one-legged players, I don't care:  I'm interested in watching them play.  I find it fascinating.  Who can do what, what a particular player's strengths are, what he or she can do, what she needs to work on, where that person should be defensively, where that person might usefully be deployed on the press, etc.  No matter what the game, what the players, what the setting:  I'm interested, and I'm moving the people around on the floor, in my mind.  I'm thinking about various defenses, what offense might be better than what I'm seeing, who should go in, whatever, endlessly.  The times I've gone back to watch the Nebraska High School State Basketball tournament:  I couldn't say I ever been happier.  Watching kids from little rural towns kill themselves in a basketball game in the Bob Devaney Sports Center:  what could be better than that?  Those kids want to win, and they're up against the eternal strugggle:  "what can I do"?  "Can I succeed?"  "Will I fail?"  I love watching basketball.

GLORIA:  Um, I know.

THANE:  Right. 

Bleeding out

At the WSJ, they're displaying a BigCharts graph of the Dow Industrial Average that looks like this:

The trajectory of the blue line, wandering down out of the blue sky in the upper left, seems particularly pathetic—it shows a market that's not just headed down, but headed literally off the chart, into a colorless void.

Market humor

1) "The nice thing about a 4% market drop is it can happen infinitely often and you still have some money left."

2) Q1:  What's the capital of Iceland?  [ About a buck fifty. ]

3) Q2:  What's the difference between Ireland and Iceland?  [ About six months. ]

4) Q3:  What's a 401K?   [ About 5K. ]

5) What's better than Investing for Total Return?  [ Investing for Return of the Total. ]

"Never give up."

Never give up.

It's something of an aphorism, and I find it hard not to agree with it in spirit, but in fact, attempting anything involves giving up the attempt to achieve something else, no?  At least for the very immediate future.

I'd be more comfortable with                                              

Never give up the dream.

It reflects my own attitude more closely.  I'm giving up for now, yes:  but in a moment, just after I clean this office, get my taxes to the accountant, wrap this pizza in tin foil and schedule my eye appointment, I'll be getting back to slaying the dragon.  

Loop the looping (?)

It's a Hot Wheels favorite, and I recall completing a few on bowling alley video games, but has anyone ever done one in a real car?

Here are some Harvard calculations.

Added later

As usual, YouTube has the answer: