tingilinde

west coast megastorm - 43 days and 43 nights ...

We've had it in the tri-state area ... its California's turn.

a piece on megastorms in Scientific American and outside of their paywall 

snip

Editor's note (11/30/12): The article will appear in the January 2013 issue of Scientific American. We are making it freely available now because of the flooding underway in California.

The intense rainstorms sweeping in from the Pacific Ocean began to pound central California on Christmas Eve in 1861 and continued virtually unabated for 43 days. The deluges quickly transformed rivers running down from the Sierra Nevada mountains along the state’s eastern border into raging torrents that swept away entire communities and mining settlements. The rivers and rains poured into the state’s vast Central Valley, turning it into an inland sea 300 miles long and 20 miles wide. Thousands of people died, and one quarter of the state’s estimated 800,000 cattle drowned. Downtown Sacramento was submerged under 10 feet of brown waterfilled with debris from countless mudslides on the region’s steep slopes. California’s legislature, unable to function, moved to San Francisco until Sacramento dried out—six months later. By then, the state was bankrupt.

A comparable episode today would be incredibly more devastating. The Central Valley is home to more than six million people, 1.4 million of them in Sacramento. The land produces about $20 billion in crops annually, including 70 percent of the world’s almonds—and portions of it have dropped 30 feet in elevation because of extensive groundwater pumping, making those areas even more prone to flooding. Scientists who recently modeled a similarly relentless storm that lasted only 23 days concluded that this smaller visitation would cause $400 billion in property damage and agricultural losses. Thousands of people could die unless preparations and evacuations worked very well indeed.

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the early days of game consoles

a history of Pong (via buzzfeed)

snip

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Even with companies creating Pong-alikes, Atari thrived. Bushnell estimates that in the early ’70s, the official Atari cabinets made $40 per day — which meant that at the end of each week (and after the venue had taken their 50% cut), Steve Bristow, another Ampex alum who followed Bushnell, Dabney, and Alcorn to Atari, had to schlep five pounds of quarters to his car when he collected each machine's earnings. By the end of the collection route, Bristow could be carrying 30-pound bags over his shoulder.

“I’d go around collecting quarters and fixing games,” he explains. “Some of the locations were not in the primest areas. We couldn’t get a concealed-weapons permit, but I had worked a few years before as a roofer, so I had a roofing hatchet. I’d be walking down the streets at midnight, carrying bags of money. My wife would be carrying one bag in one hand, the hatchet in the other.” He pauses. “Nobody bothered us.”

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where 80% are above average ...

Nate Silver on the bias and danger of internal policial polls ...

 

snip

...

Cases like these are fairly typical. My database of campaign polls released to the public in United States House races found that they were about six points more favorable to their candidate than independent surveys on average – and that they were typically less accurate in the end.

The traditional explanation for this phenomenon is that the subset of campaign polls that are released to the public is subject to a type of selection bias. Campaigns conduct polls all the time, but only occasionally disclose these results to the public and will be much more inclined to do so when the numbers are favorable for their candidates (especially in comparison to independent polls). In essence, the internal polls that filter their way into the public domain may be the outliers.

This is certainly an important part of the story, but my view is that it lets the campaigns off a little too easily.

Pollsters must make a lot of choices and assumptions about turnout, wording of questions, whether to include third-party candidates in the polls, how hard to push “leaners” toward their preferred candidates, among other factors. These can be difficult choices, even if one is operating in good faith in an effort to be as accurate as possible.

But when campaigns release internal polls to the public, their goal is usually not to provide the most accurate information. Instead, they are most likely trying to create a favorable news narrative – and they may fiddle with these assumptions until they get the desired result.

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the internet of playthings

Found on the BBC R&D blog ...  comments on a small internet of playthings get-together and apparently one of their foci.

This is an area where amateurs are likely to add a lot.  I was involved in some of those efforts in the 90s and it appeared to be one of those areas that was just waiting for the right training wheels to make it easy for people who have ideas, but perhaps not an extremely strong tech background.  One of those areas where a lot of cross fertilization, connecting the dots and play is required.

 

more on the bbc radiophonic workshop

very neat! - from the BBC  via their R&D blog..

and a bit on their work the the web audio api to recreate some of the early audio kit from the workshop.  You'll need Chrome for this and a bit of playing around to get it working for the ring modulator - which, of course, is what you will want to play with:-)

 

ex term in ate!

 

 

horsepower for your bike

A few of you will need this

you know who you are, so it is best to get in line.

going a bit beyond capacitive touch gloves

To use gloves most smartphones require special gloves that conduct a bit at the finger tips..

This one goes a bit beyond just the fingertip modification. I don't know how well it works, but it is curious to see a well known gesture for talking on the telephone made real...

(hat tip to George)

 

 

mixing bikes and cars

The unbundling of traffic modes in Holland.  Making bike travel safer...

a few interesting points:

 

• Motorised traffic can be diverted well around areas that cyclists can simply cross, because distance is not such a problem for motorised traffic. As long as the travel time stays under a certain limit and as long as the new routes have a good flow, people in cars are willing to travel (much) longer distances to get from A to B.

 

• The fact that the diverted routes for motorised traffic are longer gives cyclists the advantage of the shorter route, which makes cycling more attractive than using a car.

 

• When motorised traffic is diverted around an area, that area becomes more pleasant and liveable and the available space can be used for people, often even without the need for separated cycle infrastructure. The traffic calmed areas can for instance be changed to 30km/h (18mph) zones in which cyclists and the remaining lower amount of motorised traffic can easily mix.

 

• Where road managers do make a choice for separated cycle paths, these paths are well away from noise and air pollution of motorised traffic. This makes cycling even more pleasant than on a cycle path directly next to a main route.

 

• Because traffic is unbundled there are fewer places where the different types of traffic have to interact. That makes it possible to make the fewer crossings multilevel within reasonable costs. This also reduces the number of traffic lights and thus the number of stops. That makes travel times shorter and to be able to cycle un-interrupted at a constant speed is very pleasant for cyclists.

 

• Unbundled cycle routes can be made bi-directional in a more safe way (because of the fewer crossings). A bi-directional cycle path is wider than a cycle path for one direction, which makes it easier for faster cyclists to pass slower cyclists.

 

• Unbundled cycle routes usually go through residential areas giving cyclists a better sense of social safety than they would have on cycle tracks on larger roads which are kept well away from homes and people.

 

There aren't many places in the US that would make this sort of investment, but one wonders about the change in quality of life making a place much more walkable and bikeable.  What sort of populace would that attract?  The  thought that most people wouldn't go along with it means it probably won't happen...

on the purpose of the universe

Neil deGrasse Tyson was asked by the Templeton Foundatation (yikes - not exactly well thought of in most scientific circles) if the Universe has a purpose...  his answer in the form of a short series of sketches (one minute science style)

pseudoscience, science and reporting

A qualitative sketch based on the observations of Michael Tobias - something many of us have been trying to communicate for years.

One of the costs of a society that is mostly scientifically illiterate