Hecat Original Blog http://hecat.org/blog/ something for nothing en-us Nucleus CMS v3.65 © Weblog http://backend.userland.com/rss http://hecat.org/blog//nucleus/nucleus2.gif Hecat Original Blog http://hecat.org/blog/ Oil wager two-thirds in http://hecat.org/blog/index.php?itemid=1418 bump in the Big Mac Index.


This marks the two-thirds point in my ten-year wager with Dave on oil prices, and it still looks like it could go either way. Taking a page from Julian Simon, I am betting that oil will not become more scarce and expensive but rather more cheap and readily available. Two game-changing technological advances are working on my side. Fracking is already delivering on its earth-shattering promises of abundant natural gas, driving energy prices down. And a shift toward electric vehicles is well on its way. A mild winter and weak economy probably aren't hurting my side either.

Keep in touch Dave, talk to you in three years and four months!

the scoreboard]]> General http://hecat.org/blog/index.php?itemid=1418 Thu, 2 Aug 2012 21:30:50 -0500 Oil wager year six http://hecat.org/blog/index.php?itemid=1356
The race between burgers and barrels remains too close to call, but petroleum backers have more reason for comfort. A barrel of crude, now priced around $100, has been worth more than 19.2 Big Macs for most of the duration of our bet. I had a brief taste of the lead in early October before a rapid correction.

Will The Economist give me a few more cost-of-burger-adjustments by 2015? Will Peak Oil finally deliver on its promises? Will nefarious manipulation give one side the edge? Keep your eyes on the dashboard for the latest figures.]]> oil http://hecat.org/blog/index.php?itemid=1356 Sat, 3 Dec 2011 23:08:48 -0500 Project Euler update http://hecat.org/blog/index.php?itemid=1346 I was made to learn by heart: ‘The square of the sum of two numbers is equal to the sum of their squares increased by twice their product.’ I had not the vaguest idea what this meant and when I could not remember the words, my tutor threw the book at my head, which did not stimulate my intellect in any way.
--Bertrand RussellPaul Lockhart [Erdös 2] is the author of A Mathematician's Lament, the best screed I've read in years. The big idea is that contemporary education is broken, which hardly counts as news. But he quite eloquently demonstrates how the standard curriculum sucks all joy and life out of mathematics, which, he argues, should be taught purely as an art, without any utilitarian justification. What math does anyone learn in high school that has any use in the real world? The common inability to compute change without a calculator is often cited as evidence of woeful innumeracy, but Lockhart suggests that it is an appropriate tool; the real tragedy is that students are never given a chance to wonder about or discover mathematical ideas.

The "Lament" was mentioned in an article about Project Euler. Since discovering the site four years ago, I have been slowly picking off problems, sometimes getting stuck or distracted for months. In April 2010 I decided to stop hunting among the 350+ problems for easy scores and finish off the first 100. By Feburary this year, I had one problem left to reach my target. And I got firmly stuck. One of the early lessons in the project is that the direct approach -- brute force -- is usually too slow to get the job done. But, lacking inspiration, I often try it anyway, hoping for enlightenment. In this case I tried all manner of cheap tricks to get the solution in the minute of computer time promised to be adequate for every problem. Memoization, switching in my main loop based on the final two or three digits of the current value, precalculating magic numbers, all to no avail. Working off and on, with many false starts, I eventually accumulated 650 lines of mostly green C code.

Lockhart's screed gave me a critical, and purely psychological, boost. Soon after reading it I had a penetrating insight into the pattern of the problem -- as usual completely simple and obvious in retrospect. I noodled on some scratch paper (eventually to fill four pages) and worked out some patterns. It was a simple matter to put the new approach to code -- but it didn't work. The thrill and hope led to crushing disappointment -- was I perhaps going down one of the same wrong paths I had tried months earlier? Over several days, I repeated this same pattern -- insight, hope, experiment, crushing failure, renewed insight. I recall from Intro to Psychology that the variable positive reinforcement schedule is one of the most effective ways to make the rat keep pressing the lever, and I lost sleep working on the problem.

Finally, I cracked it. A little bit of insight, but mostly recognizing (yet again) idiotic errors in my algorithm led me to the solution (runtime 0.131 sec). I haven't submitted it yet, but I am completely confident. After posting this I will enter my solution and should get a new "award" on the recently-redesigned site: the Centurion is given to those who solve 100 consecutive problems. (Rather an elite group, with only 276 members so far, hopefully 277 soon!)
If there is anything like a unifying aesthetic principle in mathematics, it is this: simple is beautiful. Mathematicians enjoy thinking about the simplest possible things, and the simplest possible things are imaginary.
]]> Maths http://hecat.org/blog/index.php?itemid=1346 Mon, 26 Sep 2011 23:34:31 -0500 Neal Stephenson http://hecat.org/blog/index.php?itemid=1343 photo that would become, for a while, the image for Wikipedia's article on Neal Stephenson.

Mr. Stephenson was back in D.C. this week for the National Book Festival, reading from his latest thousand-page tome, this one written not with a fountain pen but using Scrivener.

I was late for the reading but managed to catch the end and get in line for the Q&A session. The audio was a bit clumsy, with large loudspeakers pointed straight at the questioners, causing them to shrink away while Neal struggled to hear. I got the last question in.

mp3
NTS: Okay we're in overtime I'll just take one more real quick.
Q: Thanks, Neal. The word from Venezuelan state television is that Presidente Chavez intends to repatriate eleven billion dollars worth of gold reserves, most of which are now in London.
NTS: I can't hear what you're saying, sorry.
Q: [same volume, one octave higher] From Venezuela, Presidente Chavez intends to repatriate eleven billion dollars worth of gold reserves. Any comments on the logistics of that kind of a transfer?
NTS: I'm not somebody who is really competent to have an opinion about it. Interesting factoid; thanks for mentioning it.
Something makes me think Dubner, asking over a calibrated, burr-ground, skimmed and French-pressed coffee, would have gotten an answer. Commenters on both the news article and a referring blog made Stephenson connections. I'll have to settle for a chuckle from the audience.

I followed the ridiculously slow-moving author cart over to the signing table, thinking I would get one up on the other fans, only to find a hoard of them already queued up. Not content with my goofy question, I planned to present the author with my smartphone, freshly-purchased Kindle version of Cryptonomicon opened to the title page. I even brought a Sharpie in case his fountain pen didn't work on the screen protector. But the line was long, and one of the handlers mentioned that some of the authors are fussy and refuse to sign anything but their current book. I lost my nerve and bailed out.

At least I have a legitimate, searchable copy of a great novel now, so I don't have to rely on that pirate site with its copy of Randy Waterhouse's treatise on the challenges of massive international gold transfer.]]> General http://hecat.org/blog/index.php?itemid=1343 Mon, 26 Sep 2011 00:13:37 -0500 Running hot http://hecat.org/blog/index.php?itemid=1325
Imagine a person as a ship. From time to time, the commander will make extreme demands of the vessel and crew.
It is alleged that, when the admiral had finished his breakfast, he was apt to signal "All ships will strike topmasts. Report time taken and number of casualties."
--unsourced quote in Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down, J. E. Gordon, p. 228
But the body is not a sailing ship, passively waiting for a breeze, it's a self-propelled steamer, carrying its own fuel.

Let's observe the ship after the captain directs a half-marathon run on a warm summer morning. Things go well enough in port, as the captain makes departure arrangements, directs the loading of fuel, plans a measured out-and-back route, and anticipates a challenging and satisfying experience. The crew falls in silently and obediently, comfortable with practiced routine.

During the brief sally to the departure point, the captain senses some tightness in the calves, calls for some stretching, then does final checks of the entertainment and navigation system before leaving port. From his position on the bridge, he monitors operations at a high, abstract level, while continuing to plan and navigate. He can manually control many aspects of the vessel's maneuvers, but the capable crew can handle these details, leaving the captain free to direct. He even puts on some music to relieve the tedium of what should be a two hour journey.

The chief engineer answers a status request from the engine room. "As usual, Cap'n, some creaking and groaning as we get warmed up, but should be smooth sailing." Sure enough, in ten minutes cooling systems crank up, and the chief requests some of the supplemental coolant laid in at port; the captain approves.

It's warm out, and the ship doesn't make her usual speed, but the captain knows better than to push hard early. "Chief, the engines are still hotter than normal, why don't you put in some more coolant." "Aye, Cap'n, it's not so easy to get the cap off the bottle out here as it is in port but we're working on it."

Then, an accident. "Alert! All hands prepare for impact! Cap'n, we've struck a root!" "Dammit, I noticed! I thought we would capsize! Damage report!" "Alarms from the port hallux, Cap'n, but she's still seaworthy." "Carry on, but keep your watch. We can't stop for repairs, and a hallux will take at least a week anyway." "Aye, Cap'n."

It seems odd, psychotic, to think of two voices speaking, and even arguing, in the same brain. But there's clearly at least one voice, that of the director giving orders, cursing setbacks. As the obstacles mount, there will be an undeniable struggle between the goals of the director and the resistance welling up from belowdecks.

"Chief, we've slowed down again, increase engine speed." "Aye, Cap'n, but there's trouble." "What's the problem, is it that hallux?" "No, Cap'n, halluces in order." "Fuel?" "Fuel supply adequate, Cap'n." "There's coolant all over, surely the engines aren't overheating?" "No, Cap'n, it's hot as blazes, but within operating limits." "Everything's in order. No excuses, let's pick up speed." "Aye, Cap'n."

There's more cursing in the bridge as the captain briefly forgets his route and orders two turnabouts. Before long the ship emerges from the woods and starts down the Washington and Old Dominion trail, frequently exposed to a blazing sun. Only five kilometers of the planned 21 are complete, and the captain is already starting to doubt his plan. He knows there are hard physical limits to his ship's performance, but also knows that he is nowhere near those limits, having pushed the ship harder and farther before, though not on such a warm day. The crew do not report details of the condition of the ship, only generalities and complaints, and he has to judge the seriousness of the situation by what he can see from the bridge and the volume of the whining. He commits to continue pushing unless there's a loss of fuel overboard.

"Cap'n, it's rough out today, perhaps we should slow her down a bit." The captain is trying not to focus on speed, but he is sure they are keeping no more than three-quarters of their usual pace. "We're just getting started, Chief. Carry on." The captain has been stranded before, far from home port and out of fuel, and he begins to calculate alternatives. They could turn around now, at a quarter of the intended distance, sail home, then go out again to complete the total. But he'll never convince the men to leave port once they see it. There's a source of fresh cool water at their turnaround point; perhaps a short break there would refresh the crew. No, once you stop you're done. But we wouldn't stop the clock, so we would pause ever so briefly. No, that's what you said last time, and we ended up lolling for ages.

"Cap'n, the crew requests a break, it's awfully hot today, I'm afraid we'll sustain damage if we push too hard." The captain ignores the chief. "Cap'n, we've used half our coolant, if we run out we'll surely be stranded out here." "Cap'n, we've never sailed in such hot weather." "Cap'n, it's so hot, and we've not even been out of port the last month. She can't take it." The captain gives in. "Turn back at the bridge over Difficult Run." "Aye, Cap'n." "At the end of the bridge." "Aye, Cap'n."

The bridge is visible in the distance. The ship sails to the end, and just a little further, as if to make a point, then executes a neat turnabout. Then, unexpectedly, the engines come alive and the ship speeds homeward, doing double time and throwing out a huge wake. "What's going on down there, Chief?" "Cap'n, we know you want to make good time. The men are pleased we're heading home." There's a hint of sarcasm in his voice, the beginning of open defiance. The captain is bitter about turning back, but the speed is exhilarating. "Just don't push her too hard, you know there will be a price to pay." "Aye, Cap'n." The ship slows down again shortly, indeed to a pace barely above drifting.

With nothing to do but continue toward home, communication dies down. The captain occasionally calls for more speed, and the chief sometimes responds and sometimes pretends not to hear. The captain is insulated from the engines in the air-conditioned bridge, but nevertheless feels irritable and seeks solace in a sailor's habits: frequent curses and fantasies of rich meals and indolence back in port.

"Cap'n, the men need a break. Just a minute of drift, then we'll make up the time." "Chief, if you idle the engines, we're finished. We'll drift all the way in." "Just a few seconds, Cap'n. We need a break." "Increase speed, we're practically drifting now." "Cap'n, we're back in the woods, rough seas. We could hit another root." "Increase speed." "Cap'n, someone is walking dogs ahead. We should slow down." "Increase speed." The ship stumbles along inefficiently, barely faster than idling speed. The captain knows nothing is seriously wrong, but the complaints are wearing him down, and his curses fall on deaf ears.

Finally, a minor obstacle brings the end. The ship drifts up a mild slope, smaller than one it sprinted up in defiance not long before. The captain neither authorizes nor openly acknowledges the cut engines. Predictably, the drift continues after the course levels. True to his promise, the captain stops the clock and declares the journey finished. He is disgusted, having covered just nine kilometers in an hour. The complaints from below cease, except for renewed alarms from the damaged hallux. It will soon sport a blotchy purple tattoo, an unwelcome souvenir from the journey. The captain uses the ample time drifting home to record observations in the log, the basis of an overlong allegory he might write up while back in port, itching for his next journey.]]> General http://hecat.org/blog/index.php?itemid=1325 Mon, 27 Jun 2011 01:13:18 -0500 Earworms http://hecat.org/blog/index.php?itemid=1322 book review got me wondering if I really do have a song playing in my head all the time. The only way to find out was to keep track, so all last week I made a note whenever I noticed a song on my mind that wasn't playing at that time in my environment. There were a few I couldn't identify, but SoundHound got most of them. I think it's possible that there are times that I am unaware of a lack of internal music, but whenever I checked I seemed to have somthing going.

Sunday
"If You're Happy and You Know It" - kid's swim class
Animal: "Neon Trees" - radio?
Simon & Garfunkel: "Homeward Bound" - Rite Aid
Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Theme - TV
Meiko Kaji: "The Flower of Carnage" (Kill Bill soundtrack) - heard last week
Franz Ferdinand: "Take Me Out" - to scrub out a song heard in the toy store
Red Hot Chili Peppers: "Otherside" - heard on car radio this morning
Steam: "Na Na, Hey Hey, Kiss Him Goodbye"
GTR: "When the Heart Rules the Mind"

Monday
Confused morning medley after alarm clock
Tarkan: "Hup"
The National: "Mansion on the Hill"
Joe Jackson: "Stepping Out" - Big Bowl
The Doors: "Spanish Caravan" - shower
Matt Monro: "The Music Played" - YouTube
Red Hot Chili Peppers: "Otherside"

Tuesday
Simon & Garfunkel: "Homeward Bound"
Beirut: "A Sunday Smile" - mp3 walking to work
Coldplay: "Trouble"
Joe Jackson: "Stepping Out" - after reviewing this list
The Doors: "The Crystal Ship" - to block Joe Jackson
The Doors: "People are Strange" - followup track on The Best of The Doors
Nazan Öncel: "Atıyorsun" - overheard
Rokysopp: "Only This Moment" - association with video
Berlin: "Take My Breath Away" - dance class
Sezen Aksu: "Şu Saniye"

Wednesday
Natasha Bedingfield: "Feel the Rain on Your Skin" - unwelcome association with overnight precipitation, but at least a change from that Eddie Rabbitt song that always used to come to mind
Pink Floyd: "Time" - played at Swing's coffee shop
Black Eyed Peas: "I Got a Feeling" - morning drive (need to fix the CD player)
Basement Jaxx: "Where's Your Head At"
The Beatles: "I Want to Hold Your Hand" - comes to mind at every street crossing when walking toddler

Thursday
Nazan Öncel: "Atiyorsun"
Wagner: "Tannhäuser"
Modest Mouse: "Float On"

Friday
Beirut: "Cliquot"
Tears for Fears: "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" - piped ambiance at Mall of America
"I'll Fly Away" - TV?

Saturday
Genesis: "Guide Vocal"
Smashing Pumpkins: "Porcelina Of The Vast Oceans"
Nine Inch Nails: "Discipline"

Sunday
Edwyn Collins: "A Girl Like You"
Phineas and Ferb theme - TV
Howard Jones: "No One Is To Blame" - radio
Journey: "Don't Stop Believing" - Safeway
Cake: "Short Skirt Long Jacket" - SportRock]]> General http://hecat.org/blog/index.php?itemid=1322 Fri, 27 May 2011 15:37:41 -0500 Iron Stars http://hecat.org/blog/index.php?itemid=1319
Halfway through a nerdy article about physics and the long-term future, I tracked down a 1979 paper it cited (3MB PDF). In it, Dyson observes that the early history of the universe is a respected field of study, but very little serious consideration has been given to the distant future. Given his inveterate curiosity and disregard for convention, he proposed to apply his understanding of physics to describe as clearly as possible the ultimate fate of everything, with a view to considering what challenges any living things will face.

Appropriate for publication in Reviews of Modern Physics, the paper includes plenty of formulae, which I mostly glossed over. I have found that authors are usually kind to their readers, and a slight effort to follow a formula is usually adequate to catch the gist. However, I am usually reading books that take the time to explain exponential notation early on. In this case the gist was hard to grasp, and presumably gets proper treatment in the cited external sources. Dyson merely provides cursory guidance like "where χ is a space coordinate moving with the matter," and other variables seem to be of the if-you-don’t-know-don’t-ask variety.

The imagery, however, is arrestingly clear. Never mind the inconvenient destiny of the sun to swell up and engulf our planet; that's just a few billion years off. The real problems come later. Planets will be ripped from their orbits by close encounters with other celestial bodies, or gravitational radiation will cause their orbits to decay until they plunge into their mother stars. Stars will be torn from their home galaxies, and eventually fizzle out and become inhospitable white dwarfs, neutron stars, or black holes. Solid objects will lose their shape -- as Dyson puts it, on a long enough time scale, "matter is liquid at zero temperature." Atoms in a rigid structure occasionally shift and rearrange themselves. So asteroids, planets, Voyager I -- all will eventually flow into spherical shapes under the force of their own gravity, like water droplets. But wait, there's more. Radioactive elements relatively quickly break down into smaller atoms. But the product elements are not perfectly stable either. Over the time scale of 101500 years, "ordinary matter is radioactive" and decays. Smaller atoms tend to fuse and larger atoms split, and all of them settle on a middling stable element: iron. So the Pleiades, Cassiopeia, Orion -- if they avoid other fates all will become cold perfect spheres of pure iron, sailing through the darkened reaches of space.

By now the reader is not surprised to learn that even this is not the end of the story. Matter in an iron star is not in its lowest energy state, and could release a spectacular amount of energy by collapsing into an ultradense neutron star. This takes quite a while longer, and may result in either a supernova or at least a vigorous outburst of neutrinos, x-rays, and visible light. These "occasional fireworks" will light up the universe after a passage of time too large to be expressed with a single level of exponentiation.

Skinner woke once, or seemed to, and struggled to sit up, calling, Yamazaki thought, for the girl.
“She isn’t here,” Yamazaki said, his hand on Skinner’s shoulder. “Don’t you remember?”
“Hasn’t been,” Skinner said. “Twenty, thirty years. Motherfucker. Time.”
“Skinner?”
“Time. That’s the total fucking motherfucker, isn’t it?”
Virtual Light

I read the paper two weeks ago, and it rather upset my habitual focus on ephemera. Earlier that week I missed a big news story while watching a ten-minute video of mesmerizing ballistic impacts which span, in total, a hundredth of a second. I watched it twice -- a welcome distraction from a 30-year mortgage, domestic responsibilities, and a looming midlife crisis. First Dyson turned my time perspective inside out, then someone close to me suffered a spasm of ennui and started asking those impossible, existential questions, all of which seem to be variations of the sentiment, "What's the point?" Even on a good day, I'm not well-equipped with satisfying answers. My head began a long, slow spin.

Dyson's paper, like the man, is upbeat, playful, irreverent. He can tell his wife, concerned about global warming, that "the polar bears will be fine," while knowing that every existing milligram of polar bear is destined to become a bit of iron near absolute zero. The second half of his paper is a quite optimistic analysis of the prospects for life, in some form, in the same distant future which had just appeared so gloomy, despite the occasional fireworks. There are good future prospects not just for life, but also for communication, the essential ingredient that makes our species social, that preserves our shared memory, that is the basis of every relationship. I took hope in this hope, felt new appreciation for those close to me, and recalled a touching passage written by a man I used to associate with hopeless doomsday scenarios.

Perhaps there is scarcely a man who has once experienced the genuine delight of virtuous love, however great his intellectual pleasure may have been, that does not look back to the period as the sunny spot in his whole life, where his imagination loves to bask, which he recollects and contemplates with the fondest regrets, and which he would most wish to live over again. The superiority of intellectual to sensual pleasures consists rather in their filling up more time, in their having a larger range, and in their being less liable to satiety, than in their being more real and essential.
Thomas Malthus
]]> General http://hecat.org/blog/index.php?itemid=1319 Fri, 20 May 2011 15:05:46 -0500 Memorize: Forster http://hecat.org/blog/index.php?itemid=1318 never know when such stores might come in handy.

Here's my first attempt.
Titular pretentions, I know it well, are a vanity. But they do no harm when uttered on a laughing lip, and in any case serve to distinguish one Jack from his fellow. Remember me, therefore, as Sir Thomas Moore.
And the correct original, with some context:
"Mr. Browne, I've left my purse behind. I've not got a penny. I can't pay for the ticket. Will you take my watch, please? I am in the most awful hole."

"Tickets on this line," said the driver, "whether single or return, can be purchased by coinage from no terrene mint. And a chronometer, though it had solaced the vigils of Charlemagne, or measured the slumbers of Laura, can acquire by no mutation the double-cake that charms the fangless Cerberus of Heaven!" So saying, he handed in the necessary ticket, and, while the boy said "Thank you," continued: "Titular pretensions, I know it well, are vanity. Yet they merit no censure when uttered on a laughing lip, and in an homonymous world are in some sort useful, since they do serve to distinguish one Jack from his fellow. Remember me, therefore, as Sir Thomas Browne."
]]> General http://hecat.org/blog/index.php?itemid=1318 Thu, 14 Apr 2011 08:50:22 -0500 Oil Wager year five http://hecat.org/blog/index.php?itemid=1298 too close to call.

Check the Oil Market Report for the latest on Macondo, easing, and cracks. In brief, the expectation is more of the same, probably.]]> oil http://hecat.org/blog/index.php?itemid=1298 Wed, 1 Dec 2010 13:36:35 -0500 Occultation miss http://hecat.org/blog/index.php?itemid=1242 August 1999 event but was foiled by clouds. March 2006 provided another chance, but I couldn't mobilize travel to Turkey. So the North American eclipses of 2017 and 2024 are already in my calendars. These long-term appointments help to balance my usual last-minute planning, I think.

Meanwhile, lunar occultations provide a compensating, if pedestrian, alternate spectacle. When it first occurred to me that the moon would eclipse stars now and then just as it does the sun, I imagined how cool it would be to see a bright star wink out behind a nearly invisible new moon, only to reappear some minutes later. Unfortunately, while this sort of alignment does occur regularly, it usually happens during daylight hours when stars are inconveniently invisible.

Predictions and timetables for lunar occultations are not easy to come by (at least compared to those provided for solar eclipses and Iridium flares). The International Occultation Timing Association provides some resources. Amateur observers make scientifically valuable contributions by providing accurate times when an asteroid or the moon blot out a star from their location. The forums at the pessimistically named Cloudy Nights site have been most helpful, especially posts by Curt Renz, who generates astronomical diagrams on his site worthy of the Mayday Mystery (examples: 1 2 3 4).

A news alert recently informed me of a major North American event, the occultation of the Pleiades. This famous cluster, also known as the Seven Sisters, has been celebrated since ancient times. God, played by a whirlwind, taunted Job saying "Can you bind the cluster of the Pleiades, or loose the belt of Orion?" It also features in the Subaru logo.

That evening, I parked on a rural side road on my way home from work and used an app (screenshot) to help time the alignment. The moon was several diameters from the cluster (labeled M45), and I estimated that I had half an hour or so before the event. When I got home and checked again, I confirmed the sad news that the app seemed to be indicating: the moon was actually moving away from the cluster. Of course! The moon drifts eastwards along the ecliptic (towards the cluster in my screenshot), but so do all the stars in the background, since it's mostly the earth's rotation causing the apparent movement. The moon's orbit causes it to lag behind the stars. The occultation had occurred the night before, and I had missed it!

Oh well, it was a familiar feeling. I relived the moment in Celestia (screenshot) and rechecked my 2017 calendar.]]> General http://hecat.org/blog/index.php?itemid=1242 Sun, 31 Jan 2010 19:57:12 -0500