Presidents of the United States of America at the Nationals Games

The presidents run races in between innings at the Nationals games in Washington, D.C.

They also throw t-shirts to the crowd.

I am sure after a game there presidents' approval ratings couldn't be higher!

Snapped off tree from this Monday's storm

The neighborhood across Shellpot Creek from us had a tree snap in half, break a line pole and take out electrical wires to the area on Monday night during some pretty powerful thunderstorms.  I walked up to get some pictures.

View of the tree and the snapped off pole.  The tree went completely across the street.

At least on telephone pole was snapped off at the top.

The tree looks burnt on one side.  I wasn't able to get a story from anyone as to whether the wind did this, lightening or whether contact with the wires caused it.

Power was surprisingly restored in only a few hours by 7:10pm.  The firefighter I spoke to said they needed to clear the road immediately from the tree because that was the only way into the development should there be a fire.  Seems everyone did a good job.  I do feel bad for my neighbors.

Nasa logo

This nice Nasa logo ...

... was on the mobile quarantine facility that the Apollo 11 astronauts had to stay in to protect everyone on Earth from moon germs.  Yes, the information said "moon germs"

I need to take the logo and make a T-shirt out of it or something.

(at our visit to the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy center)

Layers and layers of aircraft at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy center

It seems that the general approach at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy center is that the aircraft are displayed with a minimum of artifice.  There is the layer of aircraft on the floor.  Another set hanging above them and they seem to be filling in a third layer above that.

There are three hangers, the Space hanger, the plane hanger and a restoration hanger where you can watch restoration of new aircraft joining the displays.

The first site on entering is the Blackbird.

There was a remote controlled unmanned helicopter that could drop nuclear depth charges on enemy submarines.  That put me in mind of the nuclear warhead torpedoes we saw at the Pearl Harbor museum that warned that they were just as likely to destroy the vessel that fired the torpedo as the target.  The mutual assured destruction of nuclear warfare seemed to be present at all scales from global to battle.

This set of spacesuits was outside of the space hanger.  The tiny one was not for a child, unfortunately but was a doll made to promote the space suit.

They also had the a Conchord.

And THE Enola Gay.  It was up on jacks, so they tucked more aircraft in underneath it.

Two flying wings, one from Nazi Germany.

There was so much to see that it is worth a trip back again.

Space Shuttle Discovery at the other Air and Space Museum

Two weeks ago during a trip to Washington, D.C to see baseball we took a day and went to the other National Air and Space Museum, the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy center that is out by Dulles airport.  This museum, part of the same Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum that is on the National Mall, is packed full of aircraft and some spacecraft.

The Space Shuttle Discovery is there in the space hall with other interesting satellites and space technology.

The first view of it.

The engines.

A closeup of the Shuttle tiles that protected it on reentry. 

There is magnetic Space Scrabble!  It was intended for use on Skylab though never used.

Late Spring flower delight

Clematis

Iris

Rose

Fighting Woodpeckers of Shellpot Creek

These two woodpeckers were fighting and teasing each other.  I think they were trying to claim the trees in our yard in order to impress lady woodpeckers.  These are red-bellied woodpeckers according to the pictures in the Delaware Museum of Natural History woodpecker collection.  (Cornell lab link with sounds!)

Incidentally taken with my new Panasonic DMC-ZS20 camera.  it is a  point and shoot with a really good 20X optical zoom Leica lens.  They were very high up the tree in the back by Shellpot Creek.  I am pleased with my new camera!

More Excel based destruction - this time in support of austerity

A coding error in excel, among other errors, has seriously weakened the conclusions of an important financial paper (by Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, "Growth in a Time of Debt." ) regarding GDP growth at high debt to GDP levels. Another paper, ("Does High Public Debt Consistently Stifle Economic Growth? A Critique of Reinhart and Rogoff," by Thomas Herndon, Michael Ash, and Robert Pollin) tracked down the flaws - Excel spreadsheet errors, excluded data, and unusual weightings of statistics. With the importance f Excel as a modeling and calculation tool at our company, always be aware of the possibility of errors. 

When modeling and examining model results I especially think of three things among many others - 1. Do the final results make sense? 2. If not, is there an error in my calculations or in the original data? Is there an source external to the model I can check against? 3. If the result is unexpected, is this a new insight? The more surprising, the more evidence needed to convince others, especially in business.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-04-excel-austerity-economics-paper-coding-flawed.html

Beware the excel spreadsheet - especially when it can destroy the economy!

A variety of links about the ubiquitous use of excel in business and about the dangers of poorly designed software and models. Excel is a great liberator and allows the masses to create many different models, it also allows the freedom create bad or incorrect models and its very ubiquity means that it is likely to end up at the center of some big mistakes.

 In my model creation I try to separate data from calculations in a spreadsheet and I am a big proponent of database style formats (read columns) because then I can run a pivot table or better yet, put the data into Tableau for visualization. But then again much of my personal fun work in excel are modesl and simulations or data manipulation that doesn't need much rigor and will only be used by me so I am free to be creative. I do remember programming in other languages when I was young and in graduate school but now I am stuck with just excel. 

http://baselinescenario.com/2013/02/09/the-importance-of-excel/ 

This is a great link and great comment thread by programers who see the threat and promise of excel and how it fits into the bigger picture of creating software to do what the usefual spreadsheet was doing.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5198187 

A longer article from The Atlantic

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/08/software-runs-the-world-how-scared-should-we-be-that-so-much-of-it-is-so-bad/260846/ 

two more views on bad software from Baseline Scenario.

http://baselinescenario.com/2013/01/16/more-bad-software/ 

http://baselinescenario.com/2013/01/22/another-perspective-on-bad-software/

Crocuses signal Spring is coming!