Bored?

Curious about population statistics in the US? Want to know how many Asians live in Hilliard, Ohio? What about how many average cars are in Palo Alto? Population of females in DC?

A mashup of GoogleMaps and some census and housing data has all those answers and more. Click anywhere in the US on the GoogleMaps and information will be avaliable for 1 mile, 3 mile, and 5 mile radii.

Link from Lifehacker

Harvard: Secrets to Happiness

The most popular course at Harvard is Psychology 1504: Positve Psychology. Tal Ben-Shahar teaches in this course to ask the right questions: "What is most meaningful to me? What provides me the most pleasure? and What am I good at?"

He advises to simplify. Following this, Professor Ben-Shahar has taken himself off the tenure track because he does not like publishing but likes to teach.

From NPR's All Things Considered, March 22nd, 2006. Link including 6 tips from Ben Shahar.

w00t!

Woot = great site. I bought my first item tonight. An wireless mouse for $8.99, including shipping.

Every night at midnight Central Time, the site sells one and only one item. Sometimes the item is refurbished, sometimes the item is new, but almost always it is at a great deal (especially with $5 shipping for every item). Key to using this site is the "“discuss this product"” link in which you can find out whether the woot price beats froogle prices and ebay prices. The quantity of an item is unknown except for the hint that less than 10% of the item is left when the "I want one"” button is flashing.

Most of the items are computer or technology related. Some of the items I'’ve seen are include a great deal on a 61'’ plasma TV for $2500, computer parts, paper shredders, and phones,.

Woot sometimes also has specials such as $1 brown bag deals in which the contents are unknown, but it only cost $6.

One might ask, how does this work as a business model? The woot website states that they don'’t plan on making money until 2043 However, wikipedia states that they have made ~$40 million dollars annually.

Nice Quote

A nice George Orwell quote that Andrew Sullivan had on his blog.

"[I]ndifference to objective truth is encouraged by the sealing off of one part of the world from another, which makes it harder and harder to discover what is actually happening. There can often be doubt about the most enormous events ... The calamities that are constantly being reported - battles, massacres, famines, revolutions - tend to inspire in the average person a feeling of unreality. One has no way of verifying the facts, one is not even fully certain that they have happened, and one is always presented with totally different interpretations from different sources. Probably the truth is undiscoverable but the facts will be so dishonestly set forth in that the ordinary reader can be forgiven either for swallowing lies or for failing to form an opinion ..." - George Orwell, "Notes on Nationalism," 1945.

Belarus

The valiant efforts of the protesters in Belarus are inspirational. Fighting against unbearable odds, students are standing up against the autocratic rule of President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko.

"We live in a country of total fear, and very few people are brave enough to come out like this," he said, standing in front of the ranks at 4 a.m., as the temperature dropped to 10 degrees. "This action destroys fear inside the country because it tells people it is possible to fight for your own destiny."

The protesters see little chance of changes in government anytime soon. To the extent that this is a revolution, Mr. Milinkevich [the second place finisher in the presidential election] often says, it is a revolution not on the streets but in the mind.

An opposition has been born. It is small, but one sign of its early resolve is that almost everyone who stands until dawn not only gives his or her last name for publication, but also insists that it be written down, knowing then that the authorities will see who they are.

Sadly these protesters were arrested in a cowardly attempt of suppression at 3am this morning.

Shred your credit card applications

This is an interesting story that should add to your typical paranoia level. Basically this guy taped together a hand torn credit card application, put it in the mail with his cell phone number and a different mailing address, received and activated the card.

Link from Lifehacker.com.

North Korea Human Rights?

"North Korea has no people with physical disabilities because they are killed almost as soon as they are born, a physician who defected from the communist state said on Wednesday." Link from Digg.com.

66-year-old guns down boy

Martin: I've been being harassed by him and his parents for five years. Today just blew it up. Kid's just been giving me a bunch of shit, making the other kids harass me and my place, tearing things up.

Operator: OK, so what'd you do?

Martin: I shot him with a goddamn 410 shotgun twice.

Operator: You shot him with a shotgun? Where is he?

Martin: He's laying in his yard.

Above was from the 911 transcript after Charles Martin killed his 15-year-old neighbor in Union Township outside of Cincinnati. Apparently the boy was going home to get a video game and crossed through Martin's yard. Link Cincinnati Enquirer Link

The Guardian quotes the following facts on guns:

Forty per cent of American households own guns, but those guns are 22 times more likely to be involved in an accidental shooting, or 11 times more likely to be used in a suicide, than in self-defense.

Curious about these facts, I looked up the paper citing the likelihood of self-defense versus accidental shootings. The paper was published in 1998 in the Journal of Trauma, Injury, Infection and Critical Care. The methods and more statistics were published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The Guardian incorrectly quotes the numbers from this study. Unintentional shootings involving guns kept in the home (as opposed to those brought from another location), N=30, occurred 4 times more often than legally justifiable/self defense shootings with guns kept in home, N=7. Attempted or completed suicides involving guns kept in home, N=79, occurred 11 times more often than legally justifiable/self defense shootings with guns kept in home, N=7. The combination of unintentional shootings, attempted/completed suicides, and criminal assaults and homicides (N=49) with guns kept in home, totaling an N of 158, occurred 22.6 more times than legally justifiable/self defense shootings with guns kept in home, N=7.


Caveats to this study include the following:

1. Data was taken from three cities Memphis, Tennessee; Seattle, Washington; and Galveston, Texas. This maybe generalizable for cities but cannot be generalized for the entire country especially less urban areas.
2. Statistics were only captured from persons shot by a gun that were serious enough to merit emergency medical care. Thus exempt from the study were incidents when unfired guns or fired guns that missed were used in self-defense.
3. The raw numbers of this study are not high.

According to the authors studies that look at the use of guns for self-defense are difficult because the events are hard to record and opinion polls may be inflated. However, this study indeed shows that odds are if a gun kept in a home is used to injury someone it is more likely to be used not in self-defense.

Boondocks

I read this comic everyday. I wish I could post today's but I think it's illegal. "Let's stop talking and DO something!"

Where Our Tax Dollars Go

Here is an interesting view of how Congress has decided to spend the discretionary part of our income taxes in 2004.

Some highlights include:

• $359 million on the Peace Corps
• $5.481 billion on the National Science Foundation
• $27.742 billion on the National Institutes of Health
• $19.503 billion on the Department of Agriculture
• $28.192 billion on the combined total for the F-22 Raptor, C-17 Transport Aircraft, AEGIS Destroyer, F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, Virginia Class Submarine, Joint Strike Fighter, Blackhawk Helicopter, Commanche Helicopter, Stryker Armored Vehicle, V-22 Ospery Aircraft, and TRIDENT II Ballistic Missile.
• $29.446 on elementary and secondary education
• $399 billion on total military
• $383 billion on total non-military (not including "mandatory expenditures such as social security and medicare"

I found this link through boingboing.

Tippling in Spain

Have you ever heard the argument that drinking is not a problem in other countries because their citizens are allowed to drink at a younger age?

Well, this past Friday Spaniards have gotten global attention for their alcohol "problems". It all started when cities began competing with other cities as to who could throw a larger outdoor party.

For this was an orchestrated contest to establish which of some 20 Spanish cities could bring on to streets the biggest number of young drinkers. The unprecedented competition, or macro-botellon ("mega big bottle"), resulted in clashes with baton-wielding police in Barcelona and Salamanca that lasted until dawn, resulting in more than 50 arrests and 80 people being injured.

The practice of drinking alcohol bought from supermarkets in public places took root initially in Andalusia as a cheap and agreeable alternative to bar-hopping among students and young people.

Any of this sound familiar?

Link from the Independent.

Star Wars...the TV show

Lucas plans on creating a TV show based on the early years of Luke Skywalker growing up on Tatooine. The producer Rick McCallum states that the show will be at least 100 hours and will feature many new characters. Lucas also plans on a 3D animated series on the Clone Wars.
Link

Invisibility?

A company claims to have invented a way to make infantry and vehicles invisible to enemies. Imagine the consequences of this....Seems scary to me.

It's possible that a company out of Fullerton, California called Advanced American Enterprises (AAE) has achieved the holy grail--tactical invisibility. That's what they're claiming, anyway. It's called the Stealth Technology System (STS), and AAE claims that the technology really works and is ready for prime time. AAE states that STS can be applied to ground vehicles, boats, infantry warfighters, and UGVs/ground robots. Any object to which STS is applied will, according to AAE, become virtually invisible, even from as little as 20-25 feet away.

Link from Digg.com.

Shias and Sunnis in Iraq

Some good information from last week's Economist. Recent events in Iraq, leading to what perhaps may be a full fledged civil war, have been largely stoked by sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shias (also between Sunnis and Kurds). Violence began from toppling of Hussein's government when Sunnis, 20% of the Iraqi population, were removed from power. The Shias, 60% of the population, having been relieved of oppression and having gained control of the newly formed government, need to find a way to include the Sunnis in the political process. Equally Sunnis need to realize their dominance in government cannot exist as it did under Hussein's rule.

The division between Shia and Sunni Muslims arose with early disputes of leadership following the Prophet Muhammad. Shias believe that leadership in the Muslim community should follow descendents of Muhammad, whereas Sunnis believe otherwise. Sunni Muslims have come to recognize four schools of sharia, however Shia Muslims have followed the blood links of Muhammad as infallible interpreters of God's will.

Some information was obtained from this other Iraq article.

Water on Saturn Moon

Last week's Science had leading stories on one of Saturn's moons Enceladus from the Cassini spacecraft mission. The introduction to the stories include:

The flybys show that Enceladus' south polar landscape is still active today and is being resurfaced by cryovolcanism and fresh snowfall. An underground heat source lies beneath a surface grid of "tiger stripes": a parallel set of linear trenches stained with dark organic material. From these warm vents, water vapor, ice, and dust particles are lofted in a spectacular plume, like spray from a Yellowstone geyser.

Scientists present evidence that the southern pole of Enceladus is a "hot spot" and within this area a watery ocean could exist. Jeffrey Kargel comments on the papers:

If a wet domain exists at the bottom of Enceladus' icy crust, like a miniature Europan ocean, Cassini may help to confirm it. Might it be a habitat? Cassini cannot answer this question. Any life that existed could not be luxuriant and would have to deal with low temperatures, feeble metabolic energy, and perhaps a severe chemical environment. Neverthess (sic), we cannot discount the possibility that Enceladus might be life's distant outpost.

A press release is available from Cassini Imaging Central Laboratories for Operations. (Thanks to the Boingboing link.)

March Madness via Internet

CBS is allowing free internet viewing of the first 56 games of the NCAA Men's Tournament. The games on "home markets" will be blacked out, but the other games will be available on cbssportsline.com, cstv.com and ncaasports.com.

To manage the expected surge of users, especially on the first two days of the tournament, the system will create a cyberwaiting-room that will clear out only when other fans have logged off. Users will be asked every 30 minutes if they are still watching, and if they don't respond affirmatively within five minutes, their connections will be terminated.

Link

Dr. Wafa Sultan's Interview

Here is the interview from MEMRI (The Middle East Media Research Institute) of Dr. Wafa Sultan. The transcript can be found here.

Real Change brought by a Moderate Muslim?

Is this the kind of voice that might ignite real change and the necessary anger in moderate Muslims?

The following are excerpts from a NY Times article about Dr. Wafa Sultan who is taking a one woman stance against the violence used by her Muslim kin.

Today, thanks to an unusually blunt and provocative interview on Al Jazeera television on Feb. 21, she is an international sensation, hailed as a fresh voice of reason by some, and by others as a heretic and infidel who deserves to die.

Dr. Sultan said the world was not witnessing a clash of religions or cultures, but a battle between modernity and barbarism, a battle that the forces of violent, reactionary Islam are destined to lose.

But Islamic reformers have praised her for saying out loud, in Arabic and on the most widely seen television network in the Arab world, what few Muslims dare to say even in private.

"Knowledge has released me from this backward thinking. Somebody has to help free the Muslim people from these wrong beliefs.

Perhaps her most provocative words on Al Jazeera were those comparing how the Jews and Muslims have reacted to adversity. Speaking of the Holocaust, she said, "The Jews have come from the tragedy and forced the world to respect them, with their knowledge, not with their terror; with their work, not with their crying and yelling."

She went on, "We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew destroy a church. We have not seen a single Jew protest by killing people."

She concluded, "Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people and destroying embassies. This path will not yield any results. The Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for humankind, before they demand that humankind respect them."

But, she said, her life changed in 1979 when she was a medical student at the University of Aleppo, in northern Syria. At that time, the radical Muslim Brotherhood was using terrorism to try to undermine the government of President Hafez al-Assad. Gunmen of the Muslim Brotherhood burst into a classroom at the university and killed her professor as she watched, she said.

"They shot hundreds of bullets into him, shouting, 'God is great!' " she said. "At that point, I lost my trust in their god and began to question all our teachings. It was the turning point of my life, and it has led me to this present point. I had to leave. I had to look for another god."

Her remarks set off debates around the globe and her name began appearing in Arabic newspapers and Web sites. But her fame grew exponentially when she appeared on Al Jazeera again on Feb. 21, an appearance that was translated and widely distributed by the Middle East Media Research Institute, known as Memri.

Memri said the clip of her February appearance had been viewed more than a million times. Since then, she said, she has received numerous death threats on her answering machine and by e-mail. One message said: "Oh, you are still alive? Wait and see." She received an e-mail message the other day, in Arabic, that said, "If someone were to kill you, it would be me."
Dr. Sultan said her mother, who still lives in Syria, is afraid to contact her directly, speaking only through a sister who lives in Qatar. She said she worried more about the safety of family members here and in Syria than she did for her own.

"I have no fear," she said. "I believe in my message. It is like a million-mile journey, and I believe I have walked the first and hardest 10 miles."

Post from Hans

Arab Cultural Awareness

ResourceShelf's DocuTicker is full of informational documents from government agencies, NGO's, think tanks, etc. I recently started checking this site and it's had some pretty good reports. One of them is from the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence US Army Training and Doctrine Command: Arab Cultural Awareness: 58 Factsheets. Some noteworthy facts:

1. Close to 60% of earth’s oil reserves are at or near the Arabian Peninsula.
2. To be an Arab, like an American, is a cultural trait rather than racial.
3. 12% of the world’s Muslims are Arabs.
4. Turkey and Iran, not Arab countries, are the most populous Muslim nations in the Middle East.
5. Sunni and Shi'a are the two main branches of Islam.
6. Sunni are the vast, dominant majority of Islam and their worship is more conservative or orthodox than Shi’a.
7. About 10% of all Muslims are Shi’a. They are in the majority in Iran, Iraq and Bahrain.
8. The law of Islam is known as “Sharia” which means “the way”.

The Adoption Dish

Andrew Sullivan comments on the tragedy of the Catholic church and its treatment of homosexuals.

Truly heart-breaking news. The Vatican hierarchy refuses to budge in its demonization of gay couples and families. And so Catholic Charities in Boston stop placing needy children in adoption altogether. I would have reluctantly acquiesced in the discrimination, just to help the majority of kids. But I respect the integrity of the lay Catholic board in refusing to give in to an invidious piece of discrimination; and Massachusetts for insisting that the only criterion for adoption be the safety and love in adoptive households, regardless of sexual orientation. The whole thing is sad. But that's what bigotry does. Cruelty begets cruelty. And all in the name of love. All Catholics who do not share the bigotry of the hierarchy simply have to pray that one day, their hearts will open.

Bolivia Documentary

The Nation has a review on a new documentary, Our Brand is Crisis that is on the 2002 presidential race. It features Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada (Goni) and his hired consultants from the firm Greenberg Carville Shrum. In an "absurdly funny" film Our Brand is Crisis provides a view of democracy in a chaotic country.

As Our Brand Is Crisis makes clear, with its scenes of chaos following Goni's squeak to victory, elections ought to be about something more than steaming up people's emotions, venting the pressure and then hoping the populace will simmer down again, so the work of capital markets may go on undisturbed.

TerraCycle

This is a pretty sweet story and company. I heard about it because their chief-operations officer came to interview with our department. Basically they get paid to take trash, feed it to worms, and then they sell the worm poop as plant food.

Oh every part of their product is made from trash because they buy used soda bottles and fill them with worm poop. The spray heads are extras from other companies and they use misprinted cardboard boxes for shipping. Although their advertisement is like a late night infomercial, they're selling them in Home Depots and Walmarts.

I should add this company is run by people our age.

www.terracycle.net

Not for Profits = Not too Successful

There are a couple of interesting articles in this past week’s Economist from their survey of wealth and philanthropyy about non-profits and how notoriously inefficient they are. One article quotes a Harvard Business Review article stating non-profits in America alone can save $100 billion through better management. As there are currently very limited market forces if any that weed out bad charities, an example is the existence of around 40 homelessness projects in London of which only eight are any good.

Solutions are not just the obvious business management skills that need to be implemented in non-profit organizations, there are a slew of other business practices that need to be garnered. Often times donors, including me, have looked for charities that have the least overhead to ensure my money goes to the cause. Although these thoughts are well-intended and may have some merit, they are short-sighted for charities that have a bigger vision of expanding their successful operations. Charities like businesses need to build infrastructure.

Organizations such as the New Philanthropy Capital are attempting to provide more knowledge to potential donors as to the efficiency and successfulness of a charity. Providing a form of accountability to donors and incentive to non-profits through a philanthropic version of stock “buy, sell” type recommendations or ratings will hopefully form a more developed market for non-profits. This sort of knowledge is sorely needed as many people simple donate to the most famous “brands” in the charity.

Even the idea of having a social stockmarket has been suggested using social merit points. However in order for this idea to float, the most difficult question for charity work needs to be answered: how does one measure success?

Bolivia, take 2

So after a bit of research and a bit more thinking, I've got a much better attitude toward Bolivia. I guess it was just a bit of initial jitters mixed with ignorance that was making me feel not so great at first. But I can honestly say that right now I feel great about it. For more on feeling great, click here

Bolivia has pretty much completely consumed my thoughts the past few days. While I haven't called to accept yet, it's simply because I wanted some time to read all the info they sent me to make sure there wasn't anything like "oh yeah and everyone who comes to bolivia has to donate their left pinky finger to the children without pinky fingers fund" that I would have to do when I get there. But all is well, I'm calling tomorrow. It's strange how negative I initially felt about it...maybe it was a little too real a little too quick. But now I've got my gmail running Bolivia links across the top, I check the weather in Cochabamba, and I wonder about what I need to start packing and how I am going to see everyone there is to see before I ship out. So far the only thing I've thought that I really need to get that I don't have yet is a leatherman tool. Any suggestions will be welcome.

Bolivia is the home to the largest dry tropical forest in the world. So I guess that means jungle. Sweet. I'll have to take my ecuadorian machete back to South America. This is going to be awesome.

The days are getting shorter in Bolivia...they are just finishing up summer. It's going to be 104 degrees Farenheit on Wednesday.

I think I'm in a healthy state of excitment, fear, nervousness, and am looking forward to the potential to do good. This is going to be amazing. And when you guys come to visit, it's going to be amazing.

Life is good boys, life is good. Bring on the Bolivia books.

NSF Study on Science and Engineering

The Science and Engineering Indicators is a huge set of data on US and international science and engineering. If you download the pdf it's full of charts and numbers. They also break down things in layperson terms such as:

College graduates who become teachers have somewhat lower academic skills on average than those who do not go into teaching.

In academic year 1999, between 23% and 29% of public middle-grade and high school mathematics and science teachers did not have a college major or minor in their teaching field.

In 2002, the average salary of all public school K-–12 teachers was $44,367, just about $2,598 above what it was in 1972 (after adjusting for inflation).

The Flying Spaghetti Monster Letter

Where have I been? Hope you all have had the privilege of reading this already.

This is a letter to the Kansas School Board asking for schools to teach "One third time for Intelligent Design, one third time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, and one third time for logical conjecture based on overwhelming observable evidence."

Maybe the best part is their evidence that natural disasters are occurring as an indirect correlation with the global number of pirates.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster Letter

Remote Controlled Sharks

This is a neat article talking about how scientists have implanted electrodes into the brains of sharks allowing the sharks movement to be controlled. The electrodes create in the minds of the sharks the sense of an odor in a particular direction. The strength of the phantom odor then correlates to how much the sharks turn towards it, allowing the sharks to be steered.

Other implants can thus be used to decode what the sharks are sensing and thus the sharks could be used as spies to track enemy ships or even as weapons.

Bolivia

Here are some interesting facts (from CIA website) about Bolivia:

Bolivia, named after independence fighter Simon BOLIVAR, broke away from Spanish rule in 1825; much of its subsequent history has consisted of a series of nearly 200 coups and counter-coups. Comparatively democratic civilian rule was established in 1982, but leaders have faced difficult problems of deep-seated poverty, social unrest, and illegal drug production. In December 2005, Bolivians elected Movement Toward Socialism leader Evo MORALES president - by the widest margin of any leader since the restoration of civilian rule in 1982 - after he ran on a promise to change the country's traditional political class and empower the nation's poor majority.

And Bolivia compared to the US.

1. 87.2% of the country is literate -- compared to 97% in America.
   
2. Religions in Bolivia include Roman Catholic 95%, Protestant (Evangelical Methodist) 5% -- compared to the US: Protestant 52%, Roman Catholic 24%, Mormon 2%, Jewish 1%, Muslim 1%, other 10%, none 10% (2002 est.)
   
3. 0.1% of adults has AIDS (2003 est.) -- 0.6% (2003 est.)
   
4. Population: 8,857,870 (July 2005 est.) -- 295,734,134 (July 2005 est.)
   
5. Suffrage: 18 years of age, universal and compulsory (married); 21 years of age, universal and compulsory (single) You can vote earlier if you are married? More research needs to be done.
   
6. GDP: $10.06 billion (2005 est.) -- $12.77 trillion (2005 est.)
   
7. GDP by sector: agriculture: 12.6% industry: 35% services: 52.4% (2005 est.) -- agriculture: 1% industry: 20.7% services: 78.3% (2005 est.).
   
8. Population below poverty line: 64% (2004 est.) -- 12% (2004 est.)
   
9. Exchange rate: bolivianos per US dollar - 8.11 (2005)
   
10. Internet country code: .bo
    
11. Military expenditures: $132.2 million (2004) -- $370.7 billion (FY04 est.) (March 2003)
    
12. Median Age: total: 21.47 years; male: 20.79 years; female: 22.17 years (2005 est.) -- total: 36.27 years; male: 34.94 years; female: 37.6 years (2005 est.)
    
13. Natural hazards: flooding in the northeast (March-April) -- tsunamis, volcanoes, and earthquake activity around Pacific Basin; hurricanes along the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coasts; tornadoes in the midwest and southeast; mud slides in California; forest fires in the west; flooding; permafrost in northern Alaska, a major impediment to development
    
14. Terrain: rugged Andes Mountains with a highland plateau (Altiplano), hills, lowland plains of the Amazon Basin -- vast central plain, mountains in west, hills and low mountains in east; rugged mountains and broad river valleys in Alaska; rugged, volcanic topography in Hawaii
    
15. Area: slightly less than three times the size of Montana
    

Good news! The most important fact is however that there are 25% more women than men in Bolivia....

I guess I should point out that's for the 65% and over population and also life expectancy is only 65.5 years.

Wing Nuts? West Wingers?

Apparently Rob Lowe will return for some of the last episodes of the critically acclaimed West Wing.

Although my gusto for the West Wing has waned since the 5th season, the idea of this source of political idealism only lasting for a finite amount of time saddens me. At least one generation of political activists was born.

I guess that's what the DVDs are for....