Physics question

Can a wind-driven vehicle travel down-wind faster than the wind? Doc says yes.

Bad idea

At least that’s what I think today. “The Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab creates insight into how computing products — from websites to mobile phone software — can be designed to change what people believe and what they do.” Right. What could possibly go wrong?

Links

• The headline, with my emphasis, is
  

  Bagged salad safety: Rising threat of food-borne illness lurks in convenient packages of leafy greens. Leafy greens are the riskiest food regulated by the FDA, researchers for nonprofit center say.

  That’s contradicted by the second paragraph of the article, “Though beef and poultry are a more frequent source of food-related outbreaks than produce, the number of outbreaks tied to lettuce, spinach and other leafy greens, whether fresh-cut or whole, has been rising over the last two decades, according to the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest.”

• Judge expunges Mel Gibson’s drunk-driving conviction Never mind.
• Opting Out of Medicare? “The response of the Obama Administration to this lawsuit is revealing about its principles, as opposed to its rhetoric.”
• Placebos work better than they used to, but for some things see a doctor: What To Do If You Get Sick: 2009 H1N1 and Seasonal Flu

Amazing

Carbon-free sugar

Snorkels, et al.

• Video appears in paper magazines – ad-blocking glasses soon to follow, I hope.
• Even after more than 1250773200 seconds, “Unix is the best screwdriver ever built.” — 40 years of Unix
• Snorkel rice could feed millions. The snorkels grow out of the internodes.

Never mind

The (otherwise very good) cell phone company has been badgering us for weeks about some kind of voice mail thing. The big upgrade is coming! Visit that one place before the deadline and follow the incomprehensible instructions! They’ve sent text messages; there was a self-destructing voice mail; the postman brought an actual paper letter to the house.

At last came the great day. I made a half-hearted attempt to follow the instructions in the letter. I failed somehow, and didn’t peruse it. This afternoon I got a text message. My upgrade has been canceled until further notice.

Well, it wasn’t my idea, and they weren’t paying me to do it, so that’s fine, except for the part about further notice. What next? Will they send a telegram? Or a “lank unkempt elderly gentleman with a megaphone?”^* Get Ready! Two o’clock and two hours to go! Dial star blah blah! Personally I’m hoping for the Goodyear Blimp.

^*The Get-ready Man, from My life and Hard Times, by James Thurber

Two short observations

• So You Want to Buy an American Car? Well, buying American is complicated. Here’s my proposed rule: Any sufficiently complex product is made everywhere.
• Changing the summit of math education? It’s a good idea. Instead of trying to teach everyone calculus, let’s try to teach everyone statistics. The traditional math sequence has come to be more about filtering than teaching. It’s a good system for identifying and training engineers, not so good at producing educated citizens.

Reading, science, math, politics

• Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest 2009 Results are out.
• Scientists see no dietary benefit to replacing corn syrup with sugar, but I still think it’s creepy how it’s in everything. At least I know what sugar is. Besides, it would just be wrong spread lardand high-fructose corn syrup on your sody crackers.
• Like he says, Wolfram|Alpha is creeping into my workday. Lately I’ve used it at about once every day. It does more than you might think.
• Epic fail, then onward to health care and climate change!

Coincidence?

Christians protest ‘Dante’s Inferno’ while giant luminous squids over-fly Paris! President Obama to save or create 600,000 jobs!

Words, numbers, and pictures

• At the store the other day I scanned the shelves for prunes. It took a few extra seconds, my eyes first passing over the “dried plums.” The next marketing frontier is lard. It may be poised for a comeback, like eggs years ago. Remember eggs? “Poison! A heart attack in a shell! Oh, no, they’re okay; never mind.” So lard could return to respectability, except for its name, “Lard“; that disgusts even me. “Bacon butter” is worse. I can’t imagine what the marketeers will come up with, but American ingenuity will triumph.
• Does Wolfram|Alpha make the graphing calculator obsolete? Considering how easy it was to type in 0.125x^2-2y^2=1, we can hope so. — Wolfram|Alpha and the shrinking future of the graphing calculator
• Now we’re paying lobbyists to lobby us? At Government Motors, the adventure begins.
• Obama reaches out to the Muslim world? Words fail me.