Swollen creek still rising

Creek is still rising.

Shellpot Creek swollen with rain movie

The torrential downpours mean a torrential creek.

Those who study history ...

In the "The Political Prisoner" by Charles Coleman Finlay in The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Sixth Annual Collection edit by Gardner Dozois (first appeared in F&SF, August 2008), Finlay adds a corollary to a paraphrase of the familiar aphorism about history:

"Those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it"

Finlay's extension is placed in the words of Max, the story title's political prisoner:

"Those who do study history are doomed to see the repetition coming"

Prius driven 10 000 by owners

I actually bought my Prius with only 1 mile on it, so hitting 10001 is both symmetrical and significant because I put the 10000 miles on it.

So far the car still drives well. I am not getting the vaunted 50mpg (more like 40mpg) that many claim for the car, probably because my commute doesn't even give the car time to warm up the gas engine and shut it off to let the electric do some work. I am getting twice the gas mileage of the last car. I also like that the car does shut off the gas engine when you are stopped at a light. That means less emissions.

I am what I would term a comfort or convenience car buyer so my favorite features of the Prius are the bluetooth connection to my cell phone and the jack for my iPod. I also like all of the controls on the computer screen in the middle of the dashboard leaving a very clean console.

Now if only the damn thing could be plugged in and charged for even more gas savings.

Prius milestone 10 000

The prius reached 10,000 miles today, a milestone made special by being the fourth power of the base of our counting system.

One more milestone coming.

Arbitrary Prius Milestone 9999

Today the prius hit 9999 miles. More milestones to come.

Too much cancer screening can be worse than none at all

A recent article in the New York Times reports that the push for increased cancer screening may only have limited benefits. It talks especially about massive screening campaigns for rare cancers like thyroid cancer (kills only 1600/year in the US) and extending testing for breast cancer or prostate cancer to populations (younger people) where it occurs rarely or using tests that are poor screening tests.

The most insightful statement from the article:

Dr. Ned Calonge, the chairman of the United States Preventive Services Task Force said, “There are five things that can happen as a result of screening tests, and four of them are bad.”

Below is a the paraphrased and bulleted list from the article with inserted statistical names for some of these outcomes if relevant.

One good result of screening:

• Identifying a life-threatening form of cancer that actually responds to timely intervention.

Four bad results of screening:

• False Positive: Results that falsely indicate cancer and cause needless anxiety and unnecessary procedures that can lead to complications.

• False Negative: Results that fail to diagnose an existing cancer, which could lull a patient into ignoring real symptoms as the cancer progresses.

• Results that detect slow-growing or stable cancers that are not life-threatening and would not otherwise have required treatment.

• Results that detect aggressive life-threatening cancers whose outcome is not changed by early detection.

If you know the accuracy of the test and the incident rate of the cancer in the population and the cost of treatment and the value of a human life (that last one is tricky and is a minefield) then a simple cost benefit analysis will allow the determination of appropriate screening. If human lives are worth infinity then the math is impossible. When advocates of a particular approach don't understand statistics then the math is also impossible. I think the main error is the failure to understand the cost of the four bad outcomes above. Everybody focuses on the correct positives.

I think the same approach could be used with terrorism. Replace cancer with terrorism above.

Spoons attached to their injection molded frame

I can't wait to see what my spoon fighter jet model will look like when I put it together. I just have to detach all of the parts from the plastic frame first.

Someone or some machine failed to detach these spoons from the frame after the injection molding was done. Do you remember the initial thrill of getting the parts ready for the plastic models we used to build when we were little? Mine never looked like the box because I wasn't allowed paint and I wasn't patient and careful enough with the glue.

How did your models turn out?

The day after moon day when the world read the headlines

July 21, 1969 was the day when the world woke up to the headlines of man landing on the moon, though millions watched it live as it happened.

NASA has many great photographs in their history write up of the Apollo 11 mission.



Above is the iconic photo of Buzz Aldrin with Neil Armstrong and LM in reflection in Aldrin's visor. I have linked to Wikipedia's photo with black sky behind Aldrin made by extending this picture vertically, but the original shown here shows that the photo was cut off at the top. Still not a bad photo for being shot by Neil Armstrong in a space suit on the moon without a viewfinder to look through.

Because Neil Armstrong took so many of the pictures during the mission there are only a few photos of him on the moon. The one above is one that Buzz Aldrin took.

Here is another one of Neil Armstrong that has been taken from a high definition restoration of 16mm film taken by a camera on top of the lunar module. You can even see Armstrong's face through his visor. This picture is featured in a new book about the moon landing.

Finally the big blue marble with the Lunar module below.


Let's go back!

Happy Moon Day - First photograph of man on the moon published in color

This first photo of man on the moon published in color was a supplement to the Philadelphia Inquirer 40 years ago.

My parents saved this photo with the other newspapers from the moon landing forty years ago. It is too large to scan in, so I photographed it. Click on it for larger to read the text and see more detai, though the photo was not that detailed originally.

Now NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Observer has photos of the landing sites 40 years later.

Apollo 11

Apollo 14

Wish I was planning my moon vacation right now. Maybe in another 40 years. Tom Wolfe thinks he knows why we those first steps heralded the end of the program. Charles Stross asks what has the space program done for us? (lots of good stuff).

Let's go back.