Musings

Under the hands of exquisite craftsmen, our shower is returning….

New vocab: petabyte. Abbrevation is PB (no J). I thought a terabyte was immense, but a petabyte is 1K terabytes. This tacks onto a scale that starts with a bit, and 8 bits make a byte. Etc. Here’s a great explanation from Wikipedia, and you can see that there are named orders of magnitude MUCH larger than the petabyte.

Access to petabytes of data means analysis must take a different form to accomodate the sheer quantities of information. Writes Chris Anderson in Wired earlier this summer:

At the petabyte scale, information is not a matter of simple three- and four-dimensional taxonomy and order but of dimensionally agnostic statistics. It calls for an entirely different approach, one that requires us to lose the tether of data as something that can be visualized in its totality. It forces us to view data mathematically first and establish a context for it later.

So, here’s how this ramifies into science and the realm of academia:

The scientific method is built around testable hypotheses. These models, for the most part, are systems visualized in the minds of scientists. The models are then tested, and experiments confirm or falsify theoretical models of how the world works. This is the way science has worked for hundreds of years.

Scientists are trained to recognize that correlation is not causation, that no conclusions should be drawn simply on the basis of correlation between X and Y (it could just be a coincidence). Instead, you must understand the underlying mechanisms that connect the two. Once you have a model, you can connect the data sets with confidence. Data without a model is just noise.

But faced with massive data, this approach to science—hypothesize, model, test—is becoming obsolete.

So, this is the paradigm shift Anderson envisions:

There is now a better way. Petabytes allow us to say: “Correlation is enough.” We can stop looking for models. We can analyze the data without hypotheses about what it might show. We can throw the numbers into the biggest computing clusters the world has ever seen and let statistical algorithms find patterns where science cannot.

In other words, we used to employ models because data were lacking or we only had samples. Now, Anderson, says, we actually have closer to the universe of data, hence there no longer is a need for a model to guestimate the gaps.

I confess, I’m still trying to figure out how I might operationalize this (or archaeologists who are smarter than me might)…. Ideas?

You may think the most ubiquitous ancillary equipment used by Hispanic workmen in this area is the boombox (shown here).

You’d be wrong.

It’s a microwave. For lunch. No kidding.

You idiots*!

Buying stuff from spam**!

STOP IT!

* …in the sense that Ben Stiller would use the word in a script….

** “…a study out this month indicates that nearly 30 percent of Internet users confessed to purchasing something from spam e-mail.” Says the Wash Post today.

You don’t suppose there’s one of these tucked in the garden somewhere, do you?

You’d think that a famous hunk of built environment like the Château de Versailles would have a well-documented architectural history. But, no.

Apparently the existing buildings supplanted an earlier Louis XIII structure described as a hunting lodge, of which we have limited knowledge.

Luckily, archaeologists recently got a peek under the paving of the Royal Courtyard next to the main building before construction of an underground service area.

They were only able to open a narrow trench, yet still found a sunken roadway, an arc of a foundation of a modest circular tower, linear wall foundations, and a later basin (to water horses? for a fountain? I couldn’t tell from this report). Maps and pictures here.

Once again, archaeology tells us more than history!

Archive photo from several summers back, in northern Michigan, and, no, I don’t know what kind it is….

So, which is it?

When opening a can of, say, beans, I always wipe the top of the can off before engaging the can opener.

I don’t know what this plant is—maybe an extremely tall coleus?

Over-hyped: the Biden VP announcement. Sorry, he’s a solid choice, but the 24-hr news cycle is overfocused on topics that are easy to cover. And rehash. And talk about some more. As usual. Consider the many wars underway. Human atrocities. Economic nightmares. Carbon footprints. Those are worth constructive discussion and planning 24/7. And don’t get it, of course, sadly….

Not over-hyped: Bryan Clay, winner of the 2008 Olympic decathalon. That means ten events over two (or is it three?) days, folks, ranging from foot races to jumps to throws of long and round objects.*

In my book, that means he’s a real Olympian. And deserving of more hype than I predict he’ll get.

* Sorry. I wanted to report Clay’s total points, but the NBC page links are so lame that I can’t find it.

Let’s start with new vocabulary: zanco. That’s Spanish for stilt. Guess why I learned that today? Yes, another Hispanic master craftsman did his magic to help return our house to complete housedom.

I understand that a new kind of sheet-rocker-stilts use technology developed for people with missing feet and legs, those springy, curved appendages. Seems to me they’d be much easier on the knees and hips.

Other vocabulary…that piece of equipment that’s lying on the bucket? It’s a violin in English and banjo in Spanish. It has a spool of tape that runs through a bath of the sheet-rock mud (formally: joint or drywall compound), much like a tape dispenser with a pistol grip. I understand there’s a similar instrument with a longer handle so that the business end is farther away from the workman (for really high ceilings, I assume), and that’s called a bazooka (in both Spanish and English).

If you feel like some serious reading, let me point you toward an article by James Fallows in The Atlantic analyzing the performances* of the candidates in the primary debates.

John McCain is not a good debater, not even by comparison with George W. Bush. Having been in Washington for decades, he knows many issues in detail. Having been in Washington for decades, he often overexplains those details, as Bob Dole did against Bill Clinton in 1996. The exception is the whole field of economics, where through most of the Republican debates, he skated by with allusions to the advisers he would consult.

Worse, he will look and sound old and weak next to Obama. …

McCain also runs the risk of being the first Republican since Dole to go into the debates trailing in the national polls. This would allow Obama to do what George W. Bush did four years ago: nurse a lead and simply try to avoid mistakes. He’s had more practice with debates than McCain, and more recently.

In these circumstances, McCain’s tactics against Obama are obvious. He will ask for as many debates as he can, starting with informal town halls before either he or Obama is officially nominated. The informal setting shows him off to his best advantage, with the affable bantering that has long made him a favorite with the press. Whoever is behind wants more debates.

There’s lots more—fascinating—and on many other candidates. In not too long, we shall see if Fallows got it right.

* Give me points for not making any reference to the potential for stilted delivery here.

The way it was…. Below right: the way it is now….

We lost our ability to walk through walls this morning. That is a good thing!

FYI, our powers were not related to a wireless resonant energy link (now courtesy Intel).

Brace yourself: rant coming….

There’s an Enron II now, in the sense that one firm has held something like 11% of extant oil contracts through the recent price run-up. The firm is called Vitol, and the Wash Post says it’s Swiss-owned—and private (wonder what that means?). Here’s more:

CFTC documents show Vitol was one of the most active traders of oil on NYMEX as prices reached record levels. By June 6, for instance, Vitol had acquired a huge holding in oil contracts, betting prices would rise. The contracts were equal to 57.7 million barrels of oil — about three times the amount the United States consumes daily. That day, the price of oil spiked $11 to settle at $138.54. Oil prices eventually peaked at $147.27 a barrel on July 11 before falling back to settle at $114.98 yesterday.

The documents do not say how much Vitol put down to acquire this position, but under NYMEX rules, the down payment could have been as little as $1 billion, with the company borrowing the rest.

This is how our gov’t regulators—the CFTC or Commodity Futures Trading Commission—oversee things. Your tax dollars at work, and all that.

But wait! There’s more:

In the coming months, swap dealers expect to have yet another venue for oil speculation. The CFTC has stated it would not stand in the way of trading in U.S. oil contracts overseas in Dubai. Goldman Sachs and Vitol are among the major investors in this new exchange.

Watch your pocketbook! This can’t be good for any of us leetle peepull.

This rebuilding project has been an adventure in learning about new building products.

The smeary stuff on the windows is the modern way to cope with the paint/glass interface. They put this stuff on, and it drys into a skin, then, after the paint is dried, make a clean cut along the glass/frame inteface and peel it away like skin two days after a bad sunburn.

If I’d only known about this magic stuff last summer when I was painting all those windows on the cottage! Well, actually, I have to finish them whenever we get back up there, so, voila! A new technique!*

* Reminder to self: ask The Guys what this most excellent Stuff is called!

UPDATE: it’s called Masking Liquid H2O, and costs something like $60/gallon, at least to our contractor, but it doesn’t take much, so maybe they sell half-pints for those of us with small jobs.

This is the closest I’ll be getting to the Beijing Olympics—the Olympia Building downtown at Five Points!

Apparently this is a new yet retro Coke sign, installed several years ago to mimic one that had been several blocks away and removed in 1981. Fun facts about the sign: more than a mile of red neon and around 4.75 miles of wiring.